


Your Spirit Is Untainted

by can_it_fly



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Content warnings posted in the notes for each chapter, Depression, F/M, Gen, I don't treat my characters very well do I, Memory Loss, Mentions of Suicide Attempts, POV Multiple, Violent injuries, don't worry it's a happy ending, holocaust mentions, torture and experimentation are also described
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2016-01-06
Packaged: 2018-05-02 08:03:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5240816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/can_it_fly/pseuds/can_it_fly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Peggy Carter discovers just how good an idea it was for her to keep an eye on Doctor Zola after he joined SHIELD. // Story is canon for season 1 of Agent Carter and set in 1948.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Today’s Your Lucky Day

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written based on a short section of another story I'm writing. I thought it'd be a nice break from writing that story...10k maximum...well the first chapter alone is 6k which can tell you how much I underestimated. Some of the headcanons are the same as the larger story but others aren't; this is an independent AU.
> 
> Warnings for each chapter will be in the notes. I didn't want to use the tags for all of them and not every warning is for every chapter. Depiction = portrayed in-story and described by the narrator; description = in-depth explanation by a character or narrator; mention = alluded to/said in passing by a character or narrator.
> 
> Title is from "The Old Astronomer" by Sarah Williams.
> 
> Chapter warnings: Depictions of violence; descriptions of torture and experimentation; mentions of suicide attempts.

The tip had come from a lab assistant working under Arnim Zola. Director Carter had placed him there purposefully, hiding the source of his assignment to the lab, with instructions to update her weekly on his activities and actions. She still didn't trust the Hydra scientist, but his claims that he cared only for the science had convinced the fools in Washington to override her rejection and assign him to SHIELD.

The assistant's information was vague – "he draws schematics on blank paper and keeps people from looking at them" – but enough for Carter to convince her co-director, Howard Stark, to place a tail on him. Zola was violating his contract with SHIELD by keeping designs to himself, and they were well within their bounds to have him surveilled.

Still, it took almost a year and a half for the surveillance to pay off. When Carter finally dragged Zola in for questioning – her lieutenants protesting heavily, because they'd all fallen for his facade of honesty – he spent thirty minutes playing dumb before snapping and revealing just enough to leave no questions in anyone's minds about his guilt. He had then bit the cyanide capsule in his teeth, foamed at the mouth for the requisite ten seconds and died in the interrogation room.

They entire agency had given Director Carter wide latitude after that. "It's like you radiate anger," Angie explained to her over dinner the night after Zola died. "They're avoiding you because they know you were right and they're scared you'll go after them for the mess."

The lab assistant, meanwhile, received a commendation and a raise.

Carter turned her director's duties over the Stark – he was none too pleased about the increased load and complained loudly and constantly about it – and retained only her authority as she chased down leads and methodically took down the Hydra cell Zola had been building in the states.

Eight days in, a Hydra operative tried to kill her – "tried" because she impaled him with a chair leg before he succeeded. Unfortunately someone told Congress and she was subpoenaed to explain her actions.

"Ms. Carter –"

" _Director_ , senator. You yourself voted for my appointment, I'm surprised you've forgotten my title."

The senator sighed. " _Director_ Carter, you've taken an incredible number of risks for the _position_ you hold –"

"I am the operational director of SHIELD. I plan and lead individual operations at my discretion."

"And if those operations put you in the line of fire –"

"– then I'm doing my job, Senator Greeman. Now if you're done interfering with one of my investigations, then I'd like to get back to it."

The congressman sighed, consulted his fellows on the committee and told her she could go.

 

* * *

 

They found the base only a few days later.

Agent O'Molloy had traced the system that Zola and three other scientists – one each in SHIELD, the FBI and an as-of-yet unidentified agency that immediately torched the third man's apartment when O'Molloy arrested him – had used to communicate with the men and women they'd recruited into the "new Hydra", as one compromised agent had told Carter in an interrogation.

"Seven teams," she told the agents assembled in front of her. "Teams one and two will secure sections A, B and C. Team three will locate and secure the technological equipment. Four, find any prisoners there may be. Section H, probably. That's where Zola would put them.

"Five and six are with me, securing D, F and G. Seven, the record rooms will probably be in E. Keep them from being torched. This isn't grade school, Tang."

Agent Tang lowered his raised hand. "Uh, how do you know where things'll be, ma'am?"

"The same way we have the building's layout. It's an abandoned factory complex and the plans are on government record. They never bothered to remove them from the local courthouse."

What she left out: she'd fought Hydra for nearly two years during the war and knew how Zola thought. But every agent in SHIELD was already well aware of her credentials.

"Any prisoners they have, you leave in their cells until I arrive." She'd learned her lesson about deceptive captives while tackling Leviathan; Johann Fennhoff had killed her boss, after all. "No exceptions."

"Ma'am?" asked another agent – Votto, one of the only women Carter had convinced to join. She was dead-set against letting SHIELD become just another boy's club but very few women found the job's demands acceptable. "Why is Director Stark here?"

"For the technology. He's with team three. My orders overrule his during the mission. Get to your positions."

They stormed the base quietly, choosing a stealth approach to keep Hydra from resorting to self-destruction and taking half of SHIELD with them. Because that was the situation: despite Carter and Stark's best efforts they'd barely recruited or kept on enough agents to fill two offices – one in New York City and a required one in the capital, DC. Peggy had tried to spare every agent she could afford to but the size of this complex required a large team to properly secure it.

Team one reported minimal resistance in what they'd identified as the barracks, but team two had a more difficult time capturing the armory. Teams five and six easily secured their objectives and Carter felt confident they could handle going through the buildings room by room, so she jumped between captured buildings until team four radioed in, requesting her presence.

She arrived at one of the buildings in the center with one agent who doubled as radio man and guard, and found the team four's lead agent, Wietsma, waiting for her at an entrance.

"The prisoners?" she asked as they walked through the hallway.

"Almost all dead."

" 'Almost all'?"

"There's one still alive," Wietsma reported. "He looks like shit. We're getting a medic."

"You entered the cell?"

"No, ma'am. There's a hole in the door. He's chained to the wall so we think it's safe to go in, but..."

But she had ordered them not to and so they left the room alone. It had taken far too long for Director Carter to establish her authority among the mass of mostly male agents under her, but now they followed her orders almost unconditionally and it was honestly a greater relief than she'd imagined it would be.

They stopped in front of a closed door, labelled M148, and Carter gestured for it to be opened.

She recognized the man inside immediately.

"Two of you on the doors, the rest of you join the other units. Yoshida, go find that medic."

"Ma'am –" said Yoshida, "what's going on?"

Carter looked back into the room and shook her head. "I know who he is." She noticed a flash of light reflected inside the room and realized it was coming from the man himself – or rather a piece of metal attached to his arm. "Fetch Stark as well. Tell him it's about what we lost on the train."

"The – 'lost on the train', ma'am?"

"He'll understand. Go."

Yoshida nodded and left, and Peggy Carter turned her attention to the prisoner. She walked in, conscious that he was watching her – wary, hostile, still as stone – and bent her knees to get to his level.

He looked at her like she was a ghost – as if he finally had proof he was going insane.

"Barnes, dammit," she muttered, "say something."

His eyes cleared. "Well, you're a sight for sore eyes," he quipped, though his voice was hoarse and cracking. "Even if I'm hallucinating."

"I'm not real? I'm insulted."

"Hey, I didn't say you weren't real," he told her, grinning weakly. "Just that _I think_ you're not real."

His hair was caked in blood, he shivered where he sat, his face was hollow, his left arm and hand seemed to be covered in some kind of metal and he was shackled at the wrists, ankles and neck to the wall – and still he smiled.

"There's a difference?"

"Small but important one."

Director Carter turned around to look at one of the agents guarding the door. "Water and bolt cutters," she told him, " _now_."

She heard the patter of footsteps on concrete, and returned to the sergeant to inspect his bonds. The ones on his hands were held together by a thick strip of metal – keeping his hands a half-foot apart – as were the ones on his feet. "They're very tight – and this thing covering your arm – it's probably all infected underneath..."

Barnes shook his head. "Nah. The arm's gone, this is something he came up with to replace it." She looked up and he took a deep breath. "Holy shit."

"What?"

"I just – wow. I stopped thinking I'd ever get out of here. Gimme a sec."

Peggy smiled – honestly, not the tight grimace she usually held as director – and said, "I suppose today's your lucky day. Now, why isn't your arm infected? How did you survive that fall?"

"Well, uh – d'you remember in forty-three, that Hydra camp?"

"Yes – Zola had been experimenting on prisoners but he hadn't gotten started with you yet –"

"Is that what Steve said? – I didn't remember. Yeah, well, that's bullshit." He laughed – a quiet, regretful chuckle. "Most guys didn't make it past twenty-four hours, but somehow..."

"How long?"

"At least two days."

" 'At least'?"

"I wasn't paying attention to the clock, Peg."

He used Steve's nickname for her so casually, despite how little true interaction – alone, away from the Captain – they'd had with each other in the year and a half they'd served together.

"You never displayed any changes –"

"It wasn't much, just... better eyesight, a little stronger. I kinda ignored it."

"And that's still –"

"No. He made more of it and... and it hurt." Bucky coughed. "So, uh – this is Hydra, I'm guessing Steve'd come –"

"He died," said Howard Stark. Peggy turned and found him in the doorway, holding the bolt cutters she'd requested, his expression stunned. "Four days after you did."

"How?"

Stark walked into the room, bending down across from his co-director. "Forgot he didn't know how to fly a plane."

When Barnes had died, Steve's reaction had been to try to get drunk to drown the pain. Peggy hadn't known Bucky so well, but she supposed his reaction would be similar.

She was surprised, then, when he leaned back against the wall and muttered, "What a fucking surprise. Stupid punk. Where'd it happen?"

"We can talk later," said Peggy. "Let's get you out of here." She eyed the bolt cutters and told Stark, "Those won't work. The cuffs are too tight."

"Not around his neck. Maybe a blowtorch for the other ones..."

"Just – get his head free first, huh?"

"Yeah – uh, okay, let's see..."

Peggy caught sight of Bucky's expression when he saw the bolt cutters and said, "Stark, stop. Get those away from him."

"All right, then do you have a suggestion for how to get these damn things off?"

She looked at Bucky, and he held her gaze. "Can you do it?"

"Y'know," he told her, "I'm still not sure my brain isn't making you up."

"What – we're not hallucinations, Barnes," said Stark.

"No offense, but that sounds like something a hallucination would say."

"Bucky," Peggy said softly, "please try."

Barnes looked down at his cuffs and muttered, "What the hell. Can't get more screwed than I already am." He twisted his arms, grimacing as the metal strip in between the cuffs warped and finally broke. He immediately reached for the collar, wrapped both hands around it and snapped the thing off.

Stark gaped and Bucky told him, "I've been working on the cuffs long as I've been in here. Not like I broke 'em from nothing."

"Zola was exposing POWs to his serum at that camp Steve destroyed," explained Peggy, interpreting the expression on her co-director's face better than Bucky had. "Barnes was the last one taken before Steve showed up. That's how he survived."

"Oh. Okay," said Stark, "I guess."

"Cut the rest of them and find that medic," she ordered Howard. "The other teams need my supervision. Is there anything I need to know about this complex, Barnes?"

He thought for a moment. "They keep the records in two rooms near the exit. There's one big room with all of his... tools. And they have an operating theater. And, Peg – I'm not the only one who went in there."

That was a worrying statement, Peggy thought, but she pushed it out of her mind. "Well, they're all dead so we don't have to worry about that."

Director Carter returned to the agents waiting outside. "Get Agent Rosario on the radio," she told her guard. She relayed the information Barnes had given her and ordered teams one and five to reinforce three and seven, respectively.

"Director..." said one of the agents from team four – name of Temple, a woman. "You said 'Barnes'. Is that really –"

"Yes."

"How did he – if you don't mind me asking, how did he survive?"

"Zola had his ways," she said simply.

Temple accepted Carter's explanation with a knowing nod and stepped back. SHIELD's agents had already begun to villainize the Hydra scientist, or so Daniel Sousa had informed her after her appearance in front of Congress, and the rumor mill had probably commenced its aggrandizement of Zola and his talents.

Carter was waiting for an update from team one – she would go out to them herself but didn't want to leave Barnes – when another voice came over the radio: "We've got a runner," the man reported. "Just entered building M."

"What building is this?" Carter asked Stark's guard.

"Uh, M. Oh, _shit_."

"What entrance?" asked her radio man.

The reply was, "Southeast," though Carter knew it'd be no help. They didn't know the layout of this building well enough to ascertain the hostile's path to them, and anyways none of them had a compass on-hand to even find his relative location.

"Temple and Reinfeldt" – her guard – "to my left. Tang, with me down to the right. Kovacs" – Stark's guard – "in the room with Stark and Barnes."

There was a crowbar on the ground, left probably by someone in team four. She picked it up and handed it to Agent Kovacs. "Give this to Stark. Keep against the close wall so the hostile can't see you. Mute the radio equipment and give it also to Stark."

They assumed their positions at either ends of the hallway. The left end hit a perpendicular hallway in a T-shape and the right turned at a ninety-degree angle; Carter had taken with her who she'd judged to be the least experienced of her agents present and positioned herself on the outside of the corner.

Unfortunately the intruder came from the other direction. Temple shot thrice and Reinfeldt four times – calling Carter and Tang's attention to them – before a breathtakingly large man reached them. He grabbed Temple by the throat and tossed her against the wall, then swatted Reinfeldt like a mosquito when the agent kept firing.

The giant picked Reinfeldt up and looked ready to crush his neck. Carter held Tang's hand back as he raised his gun. "You could hit Reinfeldt," she told him. "Wait."

"I know, but... we can't let him kill him, ma'am."

"I know. Hey, meathead!" she called.

The giant turned to look at Carter. She raised her arms up and to the side – _come here_. "If you want a real fight, I'm waiting over here."

He dropped Reinfeldt on the ground and walked towards them – Tang made a noise like a whimper but held his gun steady as he shot twice, to no effect – but then stopped by a door and entered it instead of confronting Carter.

She rushed towards him, directing Tang to look after the fallen agents, and swore silently: he'd gone into 148. Just before reached the open door she heard a crack – a few seconds later a clang – and immediately after a thump.

Barnes stood inside the door, holding the crowbar – bent, now, slightly – in his metal hand and standing over the prone giant. His uncut hair stuck to his face, his jaw, but it couldn't hide the expression he held: satisfaction, pleasure – and hate.

He looked up, at the door – at Peggy – and held her gaze for a long moment before collapsing onto the ground.

 

* * *

 

Carter didn't trust Stark to properly supervise the detainment and processing of the Hydra operatives they'd captured, so she sent him off with Barnes and did the supervision herself. Despite Howard's claims to the contrary, she knew how to inventory the various pieces of unknown technology that he would want to look at later.

She also was wary of leaving him with the experimental explosives that team two had found in the armory. Zola's notes were in German so she'd need a proper translator to look at them, but one of her agents who roughly understood the language said they were comparable to TNT and that was enough for her to lock them down.

She was inspecting an inventory list of firearms when a voice in front of her said, "I got a call at the station from Stark. He wanted to talk to you."

Carter looked up and found Agent Sousa leaning against the wall. "Take a message."

"That's what I told him you'd say." He pulled out a piece of paper and limped over to give it to her. "Stark says he decided against the Bronx hospital and 'knows a guy' at Johns Hopkins."

" _What_?"

"Yeah, I told him you'd have a problem with that. Then he went off on some rant about how Hopkins is better but I stopped listening to the reasons. The cops found it funny that I could just ignore my boss. The sheriff didn't, though."

Peggy stifled a laugh, picturing the local police station full of cops, wide-eyed, watching Sousa holding the telephone receiver away from his ear as Howard Stark gabbed.

The agent grinned, but it quickly faded. "Peg – I heard the rumors. Is it true, is it actually Barnes?"

She sighed. "Yes. Did Stark have an update on his condition?"

"Only that he kept throwing up whenever they tried to get food in him. They were doing x-rays when I finally convinced the director to hang up."

"Security?"

"Pulled some guys from DC. How long are we gonna keep this under wraps?"

Carter looked over at the other two agents checking inventory – or pretending to, and probably instead listening to her and her second. "Go take a bathroom break," she told them.

After they'd shut the door behind them she told Sousa, "Until I'm sure Hydra did nothing to him mentally that can't be reversed."

"But I heard he took down Meathead. And you served with him in Europe too. You talked to him, can't you tell?"

"We worked out of the same field office but we didn't interact that often. And, in case you've forgotten, I've preferred not to rely on my first impressions since that time when a Russian assassin lived undetected next door to me for weeks."

Sousa winced at the memory of one of the people who'd murdered their old boss. "Point taken. D'you wanna take a break?"

"I'll rest when I'm done."

"...And I just won five bucks from the fellas in team six."

She glared at him but he only smiled smugly in return. Quite honestly they'd been getting along much better since he'd asked her to dinner two years ago and she turned him down; now they could work together without his puppy-dog eyes and her guilty-ridden annoyance.

Peggy had chosen him as her second-in-command when she'd been appointed co-director, and also set him up with his now-fiancée. She considered him a friend and even tolerated his teasing about her seeming addiction to her job.

"Good. You can buy Harriet a longer veil now."

He frowned. "She wants a veil? I thought she didn't want a veil. How do you know she wants a veil?"

"She told Angela she wanted a veil. Angie told me, and to tell you to pay attention to your fiancée's wedding plans before she spends a hundred dollars more than you'd budgeted, because she's not sure how much more talk of garlands and appetizers she can take."

"I'll call her when we get back to the city. Do you need help with this?"

"Just finishing it now. Do the locals need any more liaising or can you supervise transporting the prisoners to detainment?"

"Cops are all taken care of so I'm free. Would appreciate an explanation on why you keep giving me liaison duties, though."

Carter looked up at Sousa. "You're affable," she told him. "SHIELD is a shadow agency and you're third-in-command, and you walk with a limp. Makes us seem tame compared to Hoover's boys, and that's something the locals seem to like. I can give it to someone else if you prefer."

"Uh – no, that's fine. I'll go check on the prisoner transfer, then."

"Oh, and – Daniel?"

He swung back around on his crutch. "Yeah?"

" 'Meathead'?"

"It's what everyone's been calling that guy who attacked you and Barnes. Dunno why. He's dead now so I don't think he cares. We found out why you couldn't stop him with the guns, there was this vest with a magnetic field and some tough material that stopped the bullets. Barnes must've whacked him pretty hard, huh?"

 

* * *

 

"Patient X wakes up at least once an hour, sometimes twice. He can't hold down water and the only food he hasn't thrown up is cornmeal. He's dehydrated, he gets dizzy if he tries to stand and he panics at the sight of needles. We tried to shave his hair to look at the injury on his head but he grabbed the razor and crushed it with his left hand. Other than that, though, he's behaved."

"What about his injuries? These x-rays?"

"A lot of healed breaks and fractures – some weird burn marks on his temples – four bullet holes in his chest and these surgical scars that, uh..."

Carter looked away from the x-rays and asked Doctor Reuter, "What about them?"

He couldn't meet her eyes. "They cut him open breastbone to navel. More than once. I can't find any medical reason for it. And I haven't even started looking at his left arm. Here, I have pictures." The doctor handed them to her and explained:

"That's his right arm. There's a bunch of healed cuts that... well... we see them with people who try to kill themselves. And there's this head fracture – it's at the front of the head, think forehead, and I think it's also self-inflicted. It's still healing – I'd say it's why his head was covered in blood, but the amount of healing is comparable to... three or four days ago."

"He was exposed to the same treatment as the other patient whose files I had sent over," Carter told him. "That man had increased healing capabilities – it took no more than a week to recover fully from a broken arm, as I recall."

"I'll take a look at those files. And, miss..."

She held the photos out for him to take. " 'Director' or 'ma'am' will do, Doctor. What is it?"

Doctor Reuter looked at her for a moment – gauging her, whether he could put down the twenty-seven year-old for demanding to be called "ma'am", probably – before saying, "Two things. He has a cut across his neck, like someone slit it, but while it's clear he's been tortured all his broken bones have been set, and it looks like they wanted to keep him alive."

"Except for the gunshot wounds."

"Yes. Except for those."

"So you're saying he cut his own throat?"

"Yes. Director Stark said that the bruises around his neck were from a collar – they might have been trying to keep it from happening again."

"And the other thing?" The doctor stared blankly at her, and she prompted him: "You said there were two things."

"Oh, yes. This."

He handed her two last pictures. "Good God."

"The only comparable examples of this are those pictures you see in school textbooks about slavery."

"They... whipped him."

"Back and legs. They're keloids."

"Which are?"

"Scar tissue. Harmless but can be painful. You'd think a supersoldier wouldn't develop them."

Peggy gave a start, and the doctor continued, "There's only one guy who the SSR had with super-anything, and that was Captain America. This guy looks a lot like one of the men in his unit. You may lie to me, miss, but I won't go along with it."

Well. She would have to have a discussion with Howard Stark about how he chose doctors, then.

"Thank you, Harold Reuter of three-eight-two-zero Beech Avenue," she said curtly, "husband to Diane and father of Agatha, Gregory and Harold Junior."

Oh yes, she would play that card. "Having a doctor two thousand dollars in debt to the races isn't something I'm inclined to 'go along with' either, but according to Howard Stark you're the best there is for veterans' recovery. And I'm the best at what I do too, which is why I am a director, not a 'miss'. So here we are."

Director Carter gave Doctor Reuter a long moment to gather himself, but when he didn't speak she asked, "Do you have any concerns for his recovery?"

"No. Especially with that miracle serum."

"Good. There'll be three hundred dollars in an envelope in your car this evening. Use it only if your debt collectors offer to cut what you owe them if you tell them about James Barnes, and if they do then you tell me. Once he's discharged from your care, you may use the money in whatever way you'd like."

"What –?"

She looked him in the eye. "This is what I do, doctor. Have a good night."

 

* * *

 

Peggy found Agent Andrada from the DC office stationed in front of the room door; he and two other agents took eight-hour shifts and slept in one of the FBI's houses in Baltimore.

"Report?"

"Uh... nothing unusual. Docs and nurses only. The hall's mostly long-term patients so there aren't many visitors. We've coordinated with the hospital's guards –"

"I meant on the patient, agent."

"Um, ma'am, I'm guarding the door. I don't interact with him."

"Do you make small-talk with the doctors? Flirt with the nurses? Say good day to the cleaners?"

Andrada looked confused. "Do you want me to?"

"Yes. The key?"

She walked into the hospital room and found Barnes lying on his side, eyes shut but muttering – some foreign language, unintelligible to her but obviously familiar to him. He opened his eyes and sat up in the bed when she sat down next to him.

"Hey."

"Hello. How are you doing?"

"Well, my stomach's seen better days. And sleeping's hard. New noises."

"This is the quietest wing of the hospital," she told him. "Something about dying of cancer takes all the energy out of the patients."

That made him smile, at least. "Thanks."

"Thank Stark. He was the one who called in the favor to have you brought here. Normally we'd have just used a hospital in the city but he seemed to think you'd benefit from something removed."

Bucky nodded. "I'll thank Stark, then."

Something in his voice made Peggy take a closer look at him. "Are you all right, Bucky?"

He winced at the nickname. "No. I want this to finish."

"The tests? I believe Stark has a couple more to run but otherwise –"

"No. _This_. All this." He gestured to the room.

She still didn't understand. "...The hospital?"

He glared at her. "Y'know, for someone my mind's making up you sure are dumb."

"And for someone who has a hard time distinguishing the tangible from the imagined, you're doing a very good job pretending you aren't questioning your own sanity," she replied sarcastically.

"I just want it to _end_."

"And what happens when it ends?"

Again with the angry look. "You know exactly what happens, Carter."

"Why don't you tell me, just to make sure you know it yourself?"

Bucky was gripping the sides of the metal bedframe with both hands, and Peggy winced as she watched one – the left – crumple in his clenched hand.

She decided to stop making his day worse and told him, "Get some rest, and try to eat something. Maybe you'll sleep better on a full stomach."

He laughed – a snarl, a fire in his eyes that she'd never seen before – but didn't reply. He didn't have to; she understood the meaning full well: _fat chance of that_.

Carter heard the door open and she turned to find Stark and two of his lab technicians, the latter looking bone-tired. She stopped all three by waving an open hand and led them back out of the room. She left the techs with the guard and stopped a few paces away with Stark.

"He needs rest," she told her co-director quietly, "not more tinkering with."

"I'm not gonna do anything to him, just take another look at his arm –"

"I'm not worried about his physical health, Howard."

With some things at least, Stark was perceptive. "You think he's gonna have some kind of break with reality?"

Peggy glanced at the guard and the lab techs. " _He_ thinks he's in the middle of one," she whispered. "So give him the chance to calm down. And for God's sake, don't tell anyone."

"What, just go in there and act like everything's fine?"

"No, act as if we just rescued him from three-years'-long captivity. But don't bother him tonight, or he might tell your lab assistants that he doesn't think they're real and I don't think we can keep them from gossiping."

"Okay. What're you gonna do now?"

"Find his family. Then finish my report for the mission."

"I don't know why you insist on writing those," he muttered.

She rolled her eyes; this was a common complaint of his. "Because it's good form. And one less thing –"

"– that Congress can criticize you about, I know," finished Stark.

"I'm glad you understand. I'll expect yours by the end of the week." She smiled and walked away from him, towards to exit.

"What – Carter! Where're you going?"

She called back, "To Brooklyn!"

 

* * *

 

Mr. and Mrs. Barnes had moved after their son bought the farm, according to their former landlord. When Peggy asked further he had shrugged his shoulders and said, "Long Island. That's all I know. Go by their synagogue, someone there might know."

She got the address of the synagogue from a neighbor, introduced herself to the rabbi there and quickly found herself in his office with a cup of tea in front of her.

"SHIELD – so, you're asking about James Barnes, right?"

"His parents, actually."

"Finally going to apologize for that screw-up with the coffin?" asked the rabbi, his voice a tad bit angry.

Coffin – _what_? "There shouldn't have been a coffin, we never recovered his body –"

"Didn't stop some _schlemiel_ in the Army from sending home a coffin filled with rocks."

Peggy's mind slowed to a crawl, going through names of military administrators who would have done that – or would Phillips – there was no way that Phillips would've –

"How did they find out it had rocks in it?" she heard herself say.

The rabbi laughed, bitter. "We're Jewish. We wash bodies before we bury them. Didn't matter that the coffin was nailed shut."

She didn't reply, and the man asked, "Director Carter? You didn't know about any of that, did you?"

"No, I did not. I will find who was responsible for it, though."

"Then why're you asking after Sara and Josef Barnes?"

Peggy drew herself up. "You'll read about it in the papers in a few days. I can't say any more than that, but I do need their new address if you have it."

"Did you –" stuttered the rabbi, eyes wide, "Did you find his body?"

"I'm sorry, that's all I can say. The address?"

 

* * *

 

The Barnes house wasn't very large but it sat nestled in one of the less-populated neighborhoods on Long Island, and Peggy got turned around a couple times before she found it.

She checked the time on her watch – 1900, dinnertime – and sighed internally. It was a Friday, too, so she'd probably be interrupting a Shabbat.

Well, she reasoned, it wasn't as if they'd necessarily mind the intrusion – especially with the news she was going to give them.

Carter parked on the road and knocked on the front door. It was quickly answered by a young man – twenties, probably. She didn't know the name of Bucky's siblings, though, so she quickly said, "Good evening. Are Sara and Josef Barnes here?"

She received an annoyed glare in reply. "We're eating dinner," he told her.

"Simon!" called out another voice – male, older. "Who is it?"

"Margaret Carter," Simon Barnes replied. It surprised Peggy but she bit her tongue.

Another man appeared – Josef, probably – and said, "Miss Carter – come in."

She entered, coming to a stop in the living room. As she'd thought, the dining table was set with good china and candles. "I'm interrupting, I apologize."

"It's not a problem," said Mrs. Barnes, rising from the table along with a daughter. "How can we help you?"

"By apologizing for the casket," Simon muttered; his mother shot him an angry glance.

Peggy ignored the boy – man, she remembered; he looked near the same age as she. "Please, can we sit down?"

"Sure," said Josef.

They sat down in the living room, and Peggy was suddenly at a loss for words.

"I'm not here about the casket," she said finally. Simon – standing behind the couch his parents sat on – opened his mouth, and she plowed on: "I wasn't aware of it but I will find the idiot who thought going against army protocol was acceptable. No soldier is declared dead without a body or a confirmed sighting – _dead_ – by a comrade – neither of which happened. But, again, that's not why I'm here."

Peggy took a deep breath and decided to stop stalling. "Your son isn't dead."

She took in their reactions – shock, disbelief, wariness on Simon's face especially – noting that the daughter spoke first: "He fell off a train. More than a hundred feet."

"That he did."

"We read the report – Steve was there. _He watched him fall_."

"Yes he did, and he didn't lie," she told the girl – Rebecca, Steve had called her once, the baby of the family – "about that."

"Then what did he lie about?" asked Mrs. Barnes; she was keeping herself together better than her husband but had the beginnings of tears in her eyes anyway. "We know Steve, he _doesn't_ lie."

"I only knew Steve Rogers for two years, ma'am, but I'm rather sure we both know the conditions under which he would twist the truth."

Simon cut in: "So what actually happened that day?"

"Exactly how the Captain said it did. However, a year and a half previously your brother was a prisoner of war of Hydra's for just long enough to be dragged into a room and experimented on."

" 'Just long enough'?"

"It lasted no more than a couple days. When Rogers entered the camp, he found him in that same room. In admittedly poor condition, but not bad enough to warrant more than a cursory physical afterwards. If either of them had told us of what had actually happened, we would have caught that Bucky was exposed to a lower, modified dose of the same serum that made Steve – _taller_."

She was unsure how much the family knew about the effects Erskine's serum had had on their eldest's best friend, and didn't want to elaborate on that at the moment; it would bring up questions about what Bucky could do now, and that was something she preferred the doctors address.

However, Simon rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, and made him stronger, probably got rid of his color blindness and all that other crap he always hated –"

"Simon," said his mother sharply, "now is not the time."

"Mom –"

She said something quickly to him in another language – one that Peggy couldn't identify – and Simon threw up his hands but stayed quiet.

Peggy looked at Josef Barnes, who had frozen where he sat on the couch when she told him his son was alive. Aside from his wife rubbing his hand none of the family had even so much as glanced his way. He didn't register Carter's glance, or if he did she couldn't tell.

Mrs. Barnes turned back to her guest. "How do you know all of this?"

"Your son told me himself, two days ago. He's in remarkably good spirits considering the condition we found him in."

"What do you mean, 'condition'?"

"I really can't say any more than that."

"Hydra, right?" asked Rebecca. "What did they do to him?"

Director Carter detested repeating herself. "As I said –"

Simon interrupted: "Where is he?"

"Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland."

She and Sara Barnes arranged for the latter to travel down to Maryland on Monday: SHIELD would provide a car to the train station, and again from the Baltimore train station to the hospital. Peggy couldn't justify the expense of the train ticket so she decided to lie to Mrs. Barnes and say it was covered, and then pay for it herself.

Carter stood to leave and Sarah and Rebecca followed suit, but Josef stayed sitting.

"Mr. Barnes," said Peggy quietly.

He looked up slowly, the same brown eyes and hair as his son but framing a very different face. It was clear that Bucky took after his mother in looks, but his father carried the same desperate look, struggling to understand this shock of information.

Josef Barnes stood up and hugged her, suddenly.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Director Carter patted him awkwardly on the arm and said, "You are most welcome."

He let go and stepped back, the clarity in his eyes fading. "I'll – I'll show you out."


	2. Not the Same as He Was Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Descriptions of torture and experimentation; mentions of depression and suicide attempts.

Saturday morning came sooner than Carter would have preferred.

She hadn't even been into the office since Thursday evening, spending most of Friday afternoon tracking down the Barnes family and falling into her bed at Stark's house in the city that night without eating dinner. With her co-director still in Baltimore and a good chunk of the agency still occupied with the other results of the raid she supposed her absence in the office was being felt more acutely than it should be normally.

She learned as soon as she stepped into the building, though, that she was wrong. Yes, there were stacks of paperwork on the ends of each supervisory agent's desk, weighed down with the familiar red paperweights that meant they needed Director Carter's attention – but they were much thinner than she'd expected.

Blue meant Stark and green meant either one, and those stacks were twice as thick as hers. She sighed at the sight of them, retreated to her office for a cup of coffee and a glance at the newspaper – "SHIELD tight-lipped about Hydra camp spoils" read the front page headline – before returning to the bullpen and holding conferences with each supervisory agent.

Agent Sousa appeared during one of the lunch break shifts. "Where have you been?" she asked him.

"Downstairs, finishing inventory. Almost everything we got from those rooms in building M – you remember them, the ones with Zola's inventions – they're all labeled 'do not touch unless your name is Howard Stark'. This'll go a lot faster if he was here, 'specially since we still have all our genius scientists on house arrest."

She frowned. "We have other scientists aside from the Germans."

"Yeah, but Paperclip's are still miles ahead of ours. It's gonna take a while to get a handle on what we found, is what I'm saying. I'm trying to fill in for Stark but I'm not doing a very good job of it."

"I'm traveling down to Baltimore this afternoon. I'll have him come up." Carter looked over at the stack of papers she was currently tackling – one of the last of the bunch, she reminded herself when she felt it would never end – and sighed. "Any news from the hospital?"

Sousa shook his head. "Nothing new."

"Have you found Private Jones yet?"

"He moved to a different town but I got a couple agents ready to go and pick him up."

"Wait until Monday. His family should talk to him first."

"Yes, ma'am."

 

* * *

 

Carter talked with her co-director in the hospital for a few minutes before sending him packing. She checked in with Barnes' primary doctor once more – no one had approached him to buy information but she told him he still could not use the money – before walking over to cancer ward.

"You look as if you're in a better mood today," she told Bucky as she approached his bed.

"Yeah. Sorry about... what day was it?"

"Thursday. And I understand. I can't imagine I'd be very pleasant after the poking and prodding. You look better with your hair cut, though. Do you still think this is a hallucination?" she asked him.

He grimaced. "Still not sure."

"Well. I talked to your family, they live in Long Island now."

"And?"

"Your mother's coming down Monday." Bucky frowned, probably irritated, and Peggy added, "I believe she has a couple events for work this weekend."

He looked at her as if she was speaking nonsense. "My mom doesn't work," he told her.

"She makes pastries for a local catering company."

"Can't she make them ahead of –"

Peggy shook her head. "There's too many bakers around nowadays, now that men have taken back the factory jobs. I gather she'll lose her spot if she doesn't show up."

"Oh. Monday, then."

"Monday."

She sat back in her chair and he returned to his book. He hadn't asked after his father, why the grade school teacher couldn't come down to Baltimore on a weekend.

"You know," said Peggy suddenly, remembering she'd meant to tell Bucky this, "my mother died in nineteen forty."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

She brushed off his condolence. "I was in training in the countryside then. It was a sudden death – a stroke. I received the news but I couldn't get my head around it – I couldn't imagine it in the slightest being real – so I pushed it away and kept on with my training. Until I went back home for holiday.

"My father hadn't been very happy when I signed up for service – it had been my mother who supported me. And the whole train ride home I thought of all that I'd tell her, stories of my bunkmate and the maneuvers and skills we'd learned – and then the taxi dropped me off at the front steps of our house and I saw the black garland on the knocker."

It was a hard memory for her to recount, an awful long weekend punctuated by two air raids and five broken vases – one thrown by her father, three by Peggy herself and the last one by her aunt, her mother's sister. She took a deep breath and continued,

"I walked through the door and found black drapes on the windows. I went up to my room – I shared it with my sister but she'd married – and found my mourning dress on the extra bed. My aunt had laid it out because they'd all expected me to come home for the funeral.

"She couldn't bring herself to put it away after I'd failed to show but I never apologized to her for it. I felt that there was something else she could have done to convince me that my mother died. I didn't know but I insisted that there had to be _something_."

Bucky was watching her carefully, thoughtfully. "So, James Barnes," she told him, "you can take all the time you need to accept that this is real."

She gestured to his book. "What's that? _The Nurem_ – Bucky, you don't need to read the transcript of a war crimes trial."

"My dad's a German Jew. He lost probably everyone who hadn't moved here before Kristallnacht. And my mom's from the Ukraine, and I still don't know what happened to her family. I want to read it."

She sighed. "Two days back and you're trying to catch up in the most depressing way."

"If I'm making this up in my head then I should at least know my _mishpocha_ got some justice from the bastards who killed them," he said heavily.

"How do you know they really did, if you _are_ imagining this?"

Peggy didn't ask what kind of person would spin something as awful as the Nuremburg Trials out of thin air, how twisted or traumatized their mind was to imagine the cruelties described by the barristers – but Bucky seemed to hear her thoughts anyway.

"Some of the things they did in the camps – he must've read the transcripts 'cuz damn me if it isn't the same. 'Cept, y'know, I'm not a normal human anymore so it was _real_ science –"

"You know that's not true," she told him. "And according to Stark, it wasn't 'real science' because Zola barely wrote down the results of any of it."

He understood what she meant: "You want to know what he did."

"You can take your time. We won't debrief you until you've recovered sufficiently." Although – another thing she wouldn't admit – she wouldn't allow him to be interviewed until his mental health had stabilized as well as his physical, and at that point he could quite possibly be unwilling to discuss some of the most humiliating or painful of his memories. "It will help the doctors treating you, though. If we knew why you don't appear any older than when you fell, for example."

Bucky nodded and returned his focus to the book, though it didn't appear that he actually comprehended the words.

"Was my dad there?" he asked after a long silence. "When you went to talk to my mom?"

"Yes, of course – why wouldn't he be?"

He looked her in the eye and said plainly, "He lost his whole family to the Nazis. He didn't take it well. I thought they'd moved out to the Island after he..."

"No. He was there, and he looked well. Although he was rather... speechless after I informed them."

"Yeah. Takes him a while to process things like that."

They sat in silence for a while after – long enough for Peggy to pull out her briefcase and attend to yet more paperwork. Barnes appeared to at least be trying to read, though he only turned a couple pages.

"The reason why I don't look any older," he said all of a sudden – Carter put her papers to the side when he began – "is 'cuz they figured out pretty quick that I could survive being frozen. Like in a freezer. Kept me on ice like a pack of meat till he got released from prison. I couldn't try to kill myself when I was like that, after that time I cut my throat."

He spoke plainly, with no hesitation or embarrassment. "Then you let him out. First thing he did was make more serum – different kinds, they all felt different when he put me through them."

"When did he put the arm –" Peggy began to ask.

"After that. They made me stand for the whole thing 'cuz of something with my back – I don't remember. I passed out at some point, I think."

"You think?"

"I know I woke up later and it was there, and he was saying something 'bout how I'd be the 'new fist of Hydra' and I killed maybe five guys before they shoved me back into the freezer."

"How many times did they take you out?"

"I don't remember."

"You don't – because they did it too many times?"

He laughed. "No. Because _I can't remember_."

Peggy took the hint: "What else did Zola do?"

"I... I don't..." Bucky shook his head and cleared his throat. "The burns on my head – I know you're gonna ask about them – they're from this machine that he thought up. It hurts like nothing else I've ever felt, Peg, and I've been _vivisected_."

"What does it do?"

"It makes you forget things. I've been through it... five times? I think. As I said, I can't remember. It gets worse every time you get put through it. The first time I couldn't remember just the last few hours – then half a day, then maybe two days' worth of whatever the hell they did to me."

Bucky glanced down at the handheld recording device she'd hidden behind her back, up against the back of her chair, but didn't say anything about it. Still, Peggy pulled it out and paused the recording.

He cleared his throat and looked back up at her. "The only reason I'm telling you this is 'cuz I have no idea whether I'm making it all up in my head."

"The torture, or the past few days?"

"The second one. I mean, I _should_ think it's real by now but for all I know this is just a side effect of that damned machine. Or some new drug he came up with. He likes those."

"Zola's dead, Buck. He bit a cyanide capsule in his teeth, more than two weeks ago."

"Yeah. That'd be a treat."

She sighed. "When are you going to believe what's in front of your eyes, Bucky?"

"I'll let you know when it happens."

 

* * *

* * *

 

He liked to sleep on his chest.

He remembered that he hadn't, before the war – before that camp where he'd been strapped down on a table and they'd pumped drugs into him, things that made his muscles burn and his bones feel like they were going to crumble. After that he couldn't fall asleep on his back.

Three more years of Zola's torture and experiments had only reinforced the preference, he discovered.

He also liked to spread himself wide across the bed, letting one or both of his arms fall off the sides of the mattress and feel the air breeze by. Maybe if he was ever rescued, for real, he'd sleep like this all the time. It was definitely very comfortable, and it didn't bother the scars – keloids, one of the nurses had said – he'd gotten from the floggings.

He usually woke up quickly, prompted by whatever sound, smell or feeling his brain thought was a threat. Peggy had noted he didn't have the usual post-isolation sensitivity to sound or sight – another one of those effects of the serum that he kept forgetting about – but he supposed the quiet let him get more sleep.

Still no dreams, though, which worried the doctors and reassured him that this wasn't real. And he still slept for no more than a couple hours without waking up. It was honestly comforting to catalog his injuries, have whatever part of his mind had kept track of Zola's monologues explain to him the reasons for the experiments. Maybe next time they'd hurt less.

This morning was the same as the last four: a noise, a smell, a touch. It was around eight in the morning, he guessed, since the clock had said six last he saw. But the noise was different – and the smell, the touch too.

Warmer, he decided was how he could describe the difference in touch, and it was constant on the back of his head instead of cautious pokes at his arm the nurses favored. The smell had more apples and less soap, and the sound was louder – pages turning and a pencil writing in his mother's small script. She'd joked that there wasn't a book in their apartment without her handwriting in it and blamed his father for passing the habit onto her.

 _Mom_.

He became very aware that she was on his left side, in front of his exposed shoulder made of metal.

She withdrew her hand when he shifted in the bed, pulling his arms into his chest and pressing his face into the pillow. Eventually he said, "Mom?"

" _Yaqov_ ," she whispered – his Hebrew name.

Peggy had asked him, a few days before, when he'd start believing what his eyes could see but listening now to his mother it seemed like he wasn't the only one with that problem.

He rolled over in the bed, adjusting himself so his left arm was mostly hidden under a blanket so that she wouldn't see it – before remembering the cuts he'd made, what felt like years ago and probably was, on his right forearm. Dammit, even in this delusion he couldn't win.

But there she was with her graying brown hair and soft brown eyes, a hardcover book in her lap, wearing her old-fashioned clothes – a dress that Mrs. Rogers had re-hemmed once and added some embroidery so that his mother could still wear it – it was one of her favorites, he remembered.

She looked different, though, in little ways that stood out: the bags under her eyes – ones she'd acquired through the thirties, with the depression and the troubles in the old country – had grown deeper, and she had a scar on the side of her cheek that stood out against her light skin. Her hands were more knotted and she had cut her long hair shorter.

They stared at each other in silence for a long moment: taking in the changes and constants, judging health and emotion. Finally he decided he felt like a child and sat up in the bed; she immediately moved with him and propped up his pillow against the headboard.

"Thanks," he said. He was hoarse, still, and his mother poured him a glass of water from the jug next to her on a table. His book was there too, the transcripts of that tribunal that had tried whoever was left after Berlin fell. He wondered if she'd noticed it.

"So, uh... how is everyone?"

"Leah married last year."

"Will Grayling?"

"No, they broke up in forty-four. I thought I wrote you about it. Her husband's Joshua Miller."

He frowned; he was none too fond of Josh Miller. "Okay. And Simon and Becca?"

"Becca's in her second year at the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia. Simon..."

What about Simon? "Did something happen to him?"

His mom grimaced. "No, he... after the war he... well, he went to Europe."

"To do _what_? It was a mess over there – I imagine it still is."

She pulled his book off the stand. "About a year after this finished, they held a different tribunal for the worst of the camps. Your brother is the reason that four of the men that hanged showed up to court."

Simon – no, that couldn't be Simon.

He'd heard about those people from a nurse, the ones who'd put their lives on hold to track down the Nazis who had run at the end of the war. But Simon – _sure_ , he was loud and stubborn and too much like Steve for the two of them to ever really get along – but going up against _Nazis_ – he couldn't picture it.

"He's supposed to fly back tomorrow," she added. "His partners have some new information about a lieutenant, apparently, and they can't delay their plans."

"Oh," he said simply.

"He was not very happy when he found out that Hydra had... well, you know," she told him.

"Yeah, no surprise there. And Dad?"

She broke eye contact. "Your father is... better than he was during the war. Not the same as he was before, but he's recovered well."

"Carter said he was kinda stunned when she came by on Friday."

"Yes. It took him a while to get his head around the idea. Of you being alive, again."

His mom reached over and touched his left arm; he felt it, vaguely, because of some kind of mechanism that'd been built into the prosthetic – he'd zoned out when Stark explained it. "Did it hurt?" she asked.

"It – yes," he confessed. "A lot."

"Director Carter said that Howard Stark was looking for a way to get it off."

He shook his head. "They can't. I remember them putting it on and they – it's not..."

"Well maybe Stark will figure something out."

He leaned forward in the bed and closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead with his right hand. His mom put her hand on his upper back, to comfort him maybe, and he froze – stopped moving, thinking, anything. He couldn't function all of a sudden.

"What – what's this –"

She gasped as she felt the welts, stripes down and up and across his skin. He felt her hands run over his back and pull his shirt up to see them in their entirety.

He didn't want her to – he wished she'd never see them – and why couldn't he have kept lying down – but he couldn't stop her, he couldn't even make himself breathe –

"What did they do to you?" whispered his mother.

The words brought him back to the world, the room, and he shook his head. His face felt warm – tears, maybe, though that sensation was something he'd lost to the memory machine – and the knot he hadn't noticed growing in his throat kept him from speaking.

Bucky didn't want to cry, because crying would be like admitting that it felt worse now than it did when he was being whipped or shot, or cut into, or slamming his head into the wall because maybe that time it would work and he'd finally be free of Zola. Or how he'd convinced himself that it'd never end, that the last five days had been a grand hallucination and any moment now he'd return to Zola's table.

But still he cried, and he couldn't make himself stop.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Director Carter met Gabriel Jones outside Barnes' hospital room on Monday in the afternoon. "What's your assessment?"

"Uh, he's good as far as I can tell." They began to walk down the hallway, away from the agent standing guard and towards a small lobby. "Not in a very good mood, but then again who would be after all that."

"What did you talk about?"

Jones shrugged. "Mostly current events – nothing important. FDR died and we have Truman now, that sort of thing. I saw that book he has, talked some about that. Why?"

"How was his demeanor?"

"Uh... same as always? I mean, I remember he was a lot more talkative before Zola pulled him out in the camp. I got the feeling he was still working through some of that stuff for a while after. Stayed mostly 'cuz of Rogers. Well, this feels like the same thing, just bigger." He paused. "Y'know, I can't help thinking – and I know you'll hate this, and it's really optimistic – but all I've been thinking for the past few days is, _one down, one to go_."

Peggy gave him a hard look. "Stark still has a team out looking but nothing has changed."

"I know, I know." Jones grinned. "It's still pretty good news."

She nodded. "How's the missus?"

"Confused as to why SHIELD came knocking at one PM during Sunday brunch. I called her last night when I got up here to let her know I'd survived the flight – she doesn't like 'em. And I don't know why Stark has a penthouse in Baltimore but I won't ask questions. It's a nice place."

"I suppose that's where he's been staying as well?"

"Yep. He hired a driver and told me he'd keep him on till he didn't have to come down here anymore. Guy's a lifesaver."

Yes, that was Stark: unintentionally considerate at the oddest of times.

"I expect you'll be heading home soon?"

"Yeah, tomorrow morning. Work's been kinda slow lately. Wouldn't mind doing something like this again. Even full time."

"I barely have enough staff for two offices," she told him. "Unless you'd be willing to move..."

"Hell yes – er, heck yes, I guess. But yes please, I'll move. Get me away from the Georgia heat."

"You are aware that the District of Columbia is a swamp, correct?"

"Doesn't have to be Washington. New York's fine."

"Washington's where I need agents."

"Well then sign me up for the swamp."

Carter thought for a moment. "We've a new man for enlistment and hiring. I'll have him send you the forms. You'd most likely be assigned to the field missions division."

Jones grinned. "Thanks, Carter."

"I can't guarantee anything."

"Hey, any chance I have to make my life less boring."

"I'd expect you to be pining for inactivity after a few weeks in SHIELD."

He shrugged. "I don't care. What's the pay?"

"Go home to your wife," she told him, smiling. His enthusiasm was infectious, it seemed. "Zhou will send you the documents."

 

* * *

 

Barnes, as usual, was awake when she entered his hospital room. "I'm beginning to suspect that someone wakes you whenever I come by," she told him.

"Why? You always come in the day."

"The doctors tell me your sleep pattern hasn't normalized, and yet I never catch you napping."

He shrugged. "Maybe you have good timing."

Peggy settled into the chair next to his bed and asked, "Do you believe this is real now?"

"Stop asking me if I think I'm crazy."

"I just want to know what's going through your mind. So, do you?"

"Yeah." Bucky looked down at his hands. "I think I do."

"What convinced you?"

He sighed. "Everything was happening the way I wanted it to – and you and Stark look just like you were three years ago, and Zola was dead and I was safe – it seemed too perfect."

"And things aren't perfect now?"

Bucky looked up at her. "My brother hunts Nazis – he wanted to be a rabbi. My mom took a job, something my dad would never be all right with in a million years. My best friend is dead. And... and everyone's talking about the wrong things."

"What would you like them to talk about?"

"I tried to kill myself, Carter. Four different times. And I want people to be okay with that but they're pretending like it never happened. All they talk about is the... on my back and my legs, and this damn hunk of metal that everyone thinks I want off the moment I can but..."

Peggy frowned; she'd thought he'd want to get rid of it as well. "You want to keep it?"

"Way I see it, Zola's dead and I'm still here. He didn't take my arm off but he did come up with some way to fix it. I don't care that it was him that made the damn thing – hell, I don't even care anymore why he did it, or how much it hurt. But my mom, and everyone..."

"Hmm. Well, Stark will undoubtedly be disappointed unless you agree to let him inspect it further."

"Yeah, sure. If he can make it lighter."

"It's... forty pounds heavy, correct?"

"Yeah. And it _hurts_."

"It's probably dragging down your shoulder..."

"The spine doctor's been talking about back braces."

"I'd think the serum would help with that."

He shook his head. "No. Honestly I think it might make it worse. Steve hated that, how the fast healing made it harder to get things to heal _right_ , because bones and such would get stuck into position faster than you could set them."

"I don't remember that," she said – and honestly she didn't, and it wasn't in his files that she'd reread recently either.

"Yeah, well usually he had someone rebreak the bones before going to a medic to set 'em right. I did it most of the time."

"Why you?"

"Because no one else would. It's not like he couldn't take it – he broke his wrist once and still showed up to take the final exams."

She laughed, though there was pain in it. "I never really knew how close you were."

"We knew each other's first languages. My parents thought it was odd, his mom didn't care, but..."

"His wasn't English, then?"

"No, Irish. His mom's from the old country." He shrugged. "Haven't spoken it in years but it's all starting to come back to me. Stark says that's the serum."

"Do you anything else besides Yiddish and Irish?" she asked, genuinely interested but also remembering an old plan of hers for SHIELD. If he had a talent for languages – and would agree to work for the agency after he recovered – if he'd go along with her plan to recruit agents internationally –

"I picked up some French and German from Jones," replied Bucky. "Not as much as Steve did."

"If I sent over some books, would you read them?"

"Uh... why?"

"I've been director long enough that I can't help but thinking like one at all times," she said, an apology in advance for the request she was about to make. "And we're both well aware that experimental science and spy rings happen not just in the United States. SHIELD _does_ have the framework to become international – it was in our charter – but we haven't found anyone suitable to begin that process."

"Oh."

"You don't have to think about it right now," Peggy told him. "Focus on your recovery."

They subsided into silence again.

He was almost through the Nuremburg Trial transcripts, she noted. This volume was the fifth, and the last one she'd seen was the third; he must have been reading almost nonstop while awake.

"When did you and Steve meet?" asked Peggy, deciding she should have him think about other things.

"Uh, we were ten. I walked by him getting beat up and decided to help him out. Asked him what he did to piss 'em off and he said they'd been chasing some one-armed vet down the street and he yelled at them to stop. He did stuff like that a lot – I think the last time I pulled him out of an alley it was 'cuz some jerk was complaining about the newsreels in the movie theater."

"That sounds like Steve," she murmured.

Bucky laughed. "Yeah. Y'know, he slept on our couch a lot as a kid, 'specially during the winter 'cuz they couldn't pay for heating most of the time. Half of the quilts we have his mom made, probably as a thank-you but she always said they were Rosh Hashanah gifts."

"They were Catholic, if I remember correctly."

"Didn't matter." He sighed. "I was there, one of the times he had Last Rites. The priest glared at me till Mrs. Rogers told him to focus on the dying kid. Never told Steve about it – he probably would've picked an argument with the man before recovering and caught pneumonia _again_ for his trouble."

"Did that ever happen?"

"No, but we told him it would and honestly that's what kept him from getting out of bed too soon."

They talked for a while longer – about Steve, about Brooklyn, about creating and running SHIELD – and only stopped when a nurse came in bearing dinner: plain porridge and overcooked vegetables.

"I can have kitchens prepare something for you, ma'am," she told Carter.

"Oh, no, that won't be necessary – I'd only tempt him with my food. I need to catch my train back north in any case." She gathered her things and told Barnes, "We need to schedule your debrief interview."

"What, those recordings weren't enough?"

She shook her head. "Unfortunately, no. Would tomorrow be acceptable?"

"I dunno, I'll have to check my schedule and get back to you," he deadpanned.

"Give me a soft answer?"

"Yeah," replied Bucky, rolling his eyes, "tomorrow's okay."

"All right. I'll have Agent Sousa supervise it. I'll see again you on Wednesday then?"

"Yup."

Carter walked out of the room and met Sousa in the hallway.

"Stark's been pushing to go to the press with this," he told her.

"I know."

"So d'you think he's ready? Barnes, I mean."

"He won't be interviewed by the public, not at least for another couple weeks."

"Congress'll want to talk to him."

"There is very little he knows that won't be in the report I submit to them."

"We're – d'you want to debrief him now?"

Carter paused and looked back at the room, its door now a ways down the hallway. "Yes. He probably won't tell you everything but whatever he'll leave out I already have on tape."

"What –? Why?"

She sighed. "When you came back to civilian life, how long did it take for you to adjust?"

"A while. I couldn't get my head around how I wasn't gonna ever go back to – oh." He looked over at her with a knowing smile; no longer was he surprised when he became aware of the schemes she created. "I clammed up once I got used to being home, too."

"As did I."

"Right. Okay, the docs say only a week more, max, so I'll interview him tomorrow."

"I'll give Stark the go-ahead to contact the press. Have you talked to Harriett yet?"

Sousa groaned. "I knew I was forgetting something."

 

* * *

 

The news broke on Wednesday morning in the New York Times, with two of the three spaces above the front-page fold devoted to SHIELD and Sergeant James Barnes.

Stark had approached the editor-in-chief on Monday night after Carter gave him the green light, confident that Barnes wasn't suffering from any psychological effects of Hydra's torture. The three reporters sent by the newspaper spent most of Tuesday morning interviewing both directors along with several of the agents who'd participated in the raid the week before.

The first article was a public reporting of the raid, which mentioned some of the seized weapons and ended with a summary of the past few weeks' operation against Hydra; the second was all about Barnes, with quotes from Carter, Stark, Gabe Jones and several old neighbors and friends from Brooklyn.

Peggy had given the family a heads up on Monday afternoon and was glad to read that they had declined to be quoted.

Of course, the Congressional committee was furious that they hadn't been informed ahead of the public and Director Carter spent most of Thursday putting out that fire. They wanted to interview Sergeant Barnes publicly; she told them it would have to wait until he was discharged.

"When will that be?" asked Senator Greeman.

"That's up for the doctors to decide," she replied simply.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Three weeks and two days: that was how long the doctors in Baltimore had kept him around.

The house on Long Island was much bigger than their old apartment in Brooklyn, his mother told him as the SHIELD agent drove them home from the airport; it had a garage, four – _four_ – bedrooms and a separate den from the living room.

He got out of the car first and took in the sight. The front yard was about the size of their last apartment, and his mom had said there was a backyard too. The flowers were in full early-June bloom, he noted as he took the walkway to the front door, and the trees shaded the house in the afternoon.

It was a nice change from Brooklyn, he thought.

The door opened before Bucky reached it and out flew Becca. She tackled him with force that would have sent him sprawling before but now barely budged him from where he stood, and held him in a hug that lasted for a long moment.

"You get the small room," she told him after stepping back.

"Okay."

Becca gave him a sharp look. "It's pretty small."

"I don't care..."

"All right then, mister I'm-the-oldest-I-get-the-bigger-bedroom-in-the-new-apartment."

"...I shared it with Simon?"

"And I shared with Leah!"

He stared at her. "Are we really –"

"Nah, we can stop."

"Okay. Is there a reason we're still outside?"

"Becca, let him into the house!" called Leah from inside.

They were in the living room: the older of his two sisters, her husband – with a toddler in his lap, his mom hadn't mentioned that at all – and his father. Bucky hugged Leah first.

"Natalia Miller," he said. "That's not something I expected."

She rolled her eyes. "We mentioned at the wedding reception how you and Josh didn't get along. I look forward to letting bygones be bygones," she told him, her tone clear that it wasn't a request.

To be honest, he couldn't even remember why he hadn't liked Josh. "Fine by me. Miller."

"Barnes."

"So uh... it wasn't a shotgun wedding, was it?"

"Oh, no." Josh stood up, balanced the boy on his hip and said, " 'Parently one of your cousins escaped from – Neuengamme, right? – with her husband in forty-four but then he got shot accidentally by the Russians right before the war ended and she died getting Frederick here into the world. Orphanage found your folks over here a few months ago and we took him."

Right. Miller talked a lot, Bucky had forgotten.

"Can you say hello to your uncle?" Leah asked the toddler.

Frederick waved his hand and mumbled, "Hi."

"Which cousin?" asked Bucky.

"Erika," said Josef Barnes. "My brother Walter's kid."

He stood up from the couch – he was smaller, somehow – maybe it was that his clothes were looser on his body – and let his son hug him tightly.

Bucky's mother had said she'd told everyone about the prosthetic and the visible scars – arm, neck and temples – so he wasn't surprised about the lack of questions about those. But he wasn't prepared for the expression on his father's face when he saw the lines on his right arm, and realized that perhaps the older man hadn't comprehended what his wife told him.

Melancholia, the psychologist in Queens called it: a constant state of depressive moods. But Josef Barnes had never attempted suicide, and had gone as far as to condemn those who'd succeeded in killing themselves. Bucky had completely forgotten about his opinions on the subject.

Well. This was awkward.

He held his father's gaze when he caught it; in his periphery, Leah froze.

They stood there for a long moment, and then his dad hugged him back, equally as tight. "We'll talk about it all later," he murmured. "But right now we have dinner to eat."

"Don't tell me Leah made it."

" _Excuse_ you, I've gotten a _lot_ better at cooking," she told him.

Behind her, Miller shook his head. "Rebecca and I helped a lot," he said.

Bucky stepped back from his father and said, "What, you know how to cook now too, Miller?"

"My parents own a restaurant!"

"Ah, right. Forgot about that. So, where's the food?"

 

* * *

* * *

 

Stark came tearing into Carter's office one day towards the end of the summer and threw a telegram message into her hands. She read it once, and then again, and once more just to ensure she wasn't missing any words or unconsciously changing negatives to positives.

"Peg – c'mon, say something." She tried to find words and he continued, "I'm gonna tell 'em to go ahead with hauling it out."

"The whole thing?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"It's... rather big, if I recall correctly."

"I want to take it apart."

"Of course you do." She glanced up from the paper and asked, "Were you expecting a specific reaction? I don't know how to juggle."

"No, just... wanted to check with you about it. Before I make the call."

"It's your division, Howard. You don't need to consult me."

"I know, just – I thought you should know. Y'know, because..."

She sighed. "Yes, of course. Well, go ahead."

"We're drinking later. I'll have Jarvis bring out the champagne."

"Go already! I have work to do."

"All right." Stark stood and grinned. "Never thought this day would come, huh?"

She gave him a hard look but couldn't help a smile playing at her lips. "Howard, we can reminisce tonight. But right now I have work."

"Okay, okay. Don't forget to let Barnes know," he told her as he left.

Right. Barnes. She'd better do that before she forgot. Carter picked up the phone, dialed the switchboard number for Long Island and let the operator connect her to the Barnes residence. Not surprisingly the eldest son picked up.

"Barnes residence."

She didn't bother to identify herself; she didn't need to. "I have some bad news regarding your sanity," she told Bucky.

It was a running joke now, one that Bucky had finally accepted wouldn't die. He sighed and asked, "Okay, what is it?"

She smiled and didn't bother to hide its effect on her voice. "We found Steve's plane. He appears to be alive."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Mispocha" means extended family. The college Sara Barnes is referring to was a female medical school in Philadelphia that’s now part of Drexel University, and the tribunal she mentioned was for Auschwitz. DC isn’t actually a swamp but we natives like to say it is, especially in the muggy summers.


	3. Fighting the Whole Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of torture and violent injuries.

The first sign of trouble came when the team that had discovered Captain Rogers reported unusual sonar readings as they sailed back to Newark from where they'd hauled him out of the arctic. They were rushing, though, trying to beat the autumn ice and perhaps not taking enough care with the sonar equipment.

But then, mere hours after they'd radioed in their discovery they failed to check in with the Coast Guard when they were supposed to reenter American waters and again a half-hour later, and the same time later, and Stark called Carter in.

They sent a smaller vessel – a quick one, expensive but one that Stark had sworn would pay for itself. It reported no reply to its messages and received small-arms fire when it approached the larger ship.

"But they caught the insignia on another ship nearby," Howard told her, "and it was Hydra."

"How did they hear about it so quickly?"

"I can vouch for my sailors, Peg, but not all the techs and I'm not sure about the two agents you had onboard either."

She rubbed her temples, a headache quickly growing, and said, "They could have also tapped into our phone lines."

"I'll have someone go down to the maintenance –"

"No. They might have someone watching them. No..."

Stark crossed his arms. "You think we should take back the ship before they notice?"

"Yes, I'm thinking logistics and –"

"That's no problem. I'll have Jarvis fly out and get Jim, send someone down to Georgia for Gabe, Sousa hops on a flight to Brussels or wherever the rest of them are and you get Buck and I'll get the rest of the planning done."

She shook her head. "It'd be simpler to assemble a team here."

"Yeah, but they have the most experience doing these kinds of missions, and we both know that nobody'd be more motivated."

"What's your timeline?" she asked; she had never before seen him interested in planning an operation.

"Two days round-trip for all of them, maximum. Less if we call ahead – payphones for Morita and Jones, a secure military line for the unit in Europe."

"The unit still reports to the army, how would you propose –"

"Same way we're gonna get that secure line," said Stark, grinning. "We go to the president."

"That's drastic," she remarked.

"It's appropriate. This is _Captain America_."

Carter frowned. "I don't think Barnes should be involved."

"Why not? He basically works for SHIELD now, I don't know why you haven't given him a real job yet –"

"Because he hasn't asked for one, Howard. He's shown no interest in the agency."

Stark made an are-you-kidding me face. "He's in here every other day, almost."

"Doing your tests."

"He knows half the agents by name. Martinelli puts in his regular order the moment he walks into the diner. It's been almost two months, Peg, and I'm taking him for SHIELD before the army or anyone else does."

Peggy didn't think Bucky wanted to work for SHIELD. She'd mentioned a position for him helping set up an office overseas – Britain, she'd decided, would be easiest – but he hadn't shown much interest in it.

There were other factors, of course – mostly the torture he'd gone through perhaps creating an aversion for violence. Carter would not hire someone hesitant or prone to shock at the sound of a gunshot as a field agent.

"I'll ask him, but I'll make no guarantees," she told her co-director.

"Great. Truman's in Washington last I checked. I'll fly out there right now."

"I thought you were planning the mission."

He thought for a moment. "Well, I mean..."

She nodded. "Four boats – one as backup. Three agents in addition to a pilot on each, and spread the commandos out on the three active vessels. Give an extra agent on each if we can't fetch the entire unit. We'd also need some of your assistants and a couple extra medics. Someone who can repair a ship's engine if necessary. And extra pilot.

"And, Howard," she added as he turned to leave, "you take the lead on this one. I'll be on the mission."

"Why?"

Peggy smiled sadly. "This is personal for me. I'll go to Washington – you'll be too busy setting it all up anyway – but otherwise I can't have control over the operation."

"Get Barnes too."

She nodded again, and Stark left the room.

 

* * *

 

Carter sent a car out to Long Island on Saturday morning to pick up Barnes and met him at Angie's Diner – SHIELD's common nickname for the L&L Automat where Peggy's roommate worked. Some agents early on had noticed that she frequented the restaurant and tried to curry her favor by eating there too, and now perhaps a quarter of the frequent customers worked for the agency.

Bucky, as Stark had noted, was also familiar with the establishment. Angie quickly brought them both their usual orders and asked, "Are you working for SHIELD yet?"

"Uh, no."

"Could've fooled me, I see you in here three times a week."

"Angie..." said Peggy.

"Yeah, yeah. Just checking whether he's gonna go on my list of regulars or not."

"You have a list?" he asked.

"Yup! Name and orders. Anyway, I've got other customers."

Peggy told her, "Thank you, Angie."

The waitress shrugged and left.

Barnes plowed through most of his food – a triple order of potato pancakes, something his troubled stomach could hold down – before asking, "So what's going on? You said you found –"

"Yes." She held her hand up and lowered it slowly: _be quiet_.

"...Okay. Is there a problem?"

"Yes. Your old friends were informed shortly after we were. We still don't know how they found out, which is why I didn't call ahead this morning."

He froze, food still in his mouth. "What'd they do?"

"They took the ship and its contents."

"Casualties?"

"Unknown."

"Well they can't wake him up there – it's a search and rescue ship, not a lab."

"Exactly."

"I want in," he told her.

"Take a minute to think –"

"I don't need to, Carter. I'm going."

"How do you know you can be around weapons anymore? The torture –"

He laughed. "Take me over to the range. I'm fine with guns. Ask Girard if you don't believe me."

"Your family –"

"Parents are upstate at a wedding and won't be home till Monday morning. My sister won't need any convincing, I'll just tell her I'm helping you take down one last cell and I'll be home before anyone notices I'm gone."

"Are you absolutely sure –"

"Yeah, Peg. I am."

She sighed. "All right. Finish your food and I'll have someone take you to the range."

 

* * *

 

Eight commandos, twenty-three SHIELD agents of varying capacity – helmsmen, technician, field – and one director converged on a moderately small ship docked in the Newark, New Jersey harbor.

Carter assumed a position on the deck, where she could supervise the loading of weapons and supplies onto the vessel while also listen in on the conversation held by the old members of the 107th unit inside a room off the deck.

"Heard about the arm," Dugan said. "Looks like the real deal."

"There isn't any way you can get it off?" asked Falsworth.

Bucky replied, "It's not that bad. Useful. Heavy but you should see it punch."

"Still... it's _Hydra_."

"And after we finish here they'll be gone. From the States, at least."

"So?" asked Dugan. "Won't take back what they did to you."

Morita supplied, "It doesn't look that bad. You could probably get it right –"

"It's attached to his spine," Carter told them, judging it was a good time to enter the room. "Stark wouldn't take it off even if he found a way to."

"Well, why didn't you just say that, Barnes?" asked Dugan. He nodded at Carter. "Peg."

Peggy saw the flash of anger pass across Bucky's face. She gave him a sharp glance and he sighed.

"So are you in charge or is Dum-Dum here calling the shots?" he asked her.

"I assumed Dugan would prefer to, unless you've done enough of that in Europe."

Dugan grinned back. "I thought you'd want it, _director_."

"Being director is like herding cats," she told him. "Commanding you fellows would be a welcome relief but I suspect I'd hate my job after and start pining for the good old days." Morita snickered. "Something to add, Private?"

"Uh, nothing. Just... if Cap defrosts and wants back in on the unit..."

"He won't," said Barnes, loading his handgun.

"How d'you know?"

He looked up. "Have I ever played the best friend card? I don't remember."

Falsworth: "No, and honestly I was wondering if or when you would. Better question is what he'll think of Carter being in charge of the SSR – sorry, SHIELD."

"He'd tell you it was appropriate," Carter told him testily.

"Be kinda awkward though," observed Dugan. "Y'know – you two have that thing –"

She bristled; this was not something she wanted to discuss. " _Had_ a thing, Sergeant."

"C'mon, Peg – it's Cap, are you really gonna –"

Bucky interrupted, "How about we stop talking about this till we make sure he's alive."

"I thought that was confirmed," Morita replied. "He just, y'know, has to get unfrozen."

"They _thought_ he was alive. I'm not getting my hopes up 'cuz some salvage crew made a guess."

The room fell into silence then; they all turned to their uniforms and weapons, choosing not to further explore the idea that Captain Rogers was in fact dead, and this was a mission to recover a body instead of a living friend.

After a while Dugan asked, "Where's Gabe? He said he'd be here."

Bucky shrugged. "He lives in Georgia. Getting up here takes a while."

"Not as hard as you'd think," said Jones, entering the room in dress uniform and grabbing his gear off the shelf, "at least when SHIELD's involved. Uniform helped on the train but Stark held me up by running through the different explosives Hydra might use."

"How's the wife?"

"Due in December."

The other commandoes let out a chorus of congratulations, but Bucky just chuckled. "Couldn't imagine she'd want you coming, what with all the packing. How'd you convince her?"

"I let slip that Stark would let us stay at his place. Then she decided she might let me come along."

They laughed. "Has Frenchie's kid come out yet?" asked Morita.

"Nah, wife's still pushing last I heard," Dugan told him. "Are we waiting for anyone else?"

"Your new guys. What're they like?"

"Talkative. I like 'em, can't imagine you would though."

"Where are they?" asked Carter.

"Up on the starboard deck. Sawyer gets seasick so I told 'em all to get some fresh air."

Jones: "Three of 'em, right?"

"Yup. Where're you moving to?"

"Washington. I start at SHIELD next week."

" 'Bout time one of us went over there," Dugan commented. "So, Carter... I'm in command of the mission but I'm guessing you're calling the shots if things get hinky."

"You guess correctly," she replied. "If it comes to that."

"Unknown number of hostiles, captives, weapons, and we barely have a good schematic of the ship," said Morita. "Nah, everything'll be fine."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jim," Falsworth said.

"I'm just sayin'."

"All right, someone go get the guys from up on deck," ordered Dugan. "And your agents, Peg. Since we're all onboard now."

 

* * *

 

Dugan walked them through the plan to storm the ship and divvied up sections of the ship; Carter was on the boat approaching starboard-side and boarded alongside Dugan, Pinkerton and several SHIELD agents.

She quickly cleared her portion of the ship – securing the unconscious Hydra operatives with handcuffs and calling her agents over to supervise them – and continued into the portion of the boat given to Barnes, who had come on board on the port side.

The director found herself on a walkway that wrapped around the walls one deck above the floor. Her shows were quiet and the deck brightly lit but from the ceiling below her feet, leaving her in the shadows.

Barnes had beaten her there: he stood near an entrance below and a diagonal away from her, relaxed against the wall but with his hands clutching his weapon.

Carter moved around the walkway a discovered why: opposite the sergeant stood four men, much better armed than Barnes, guns trained on him. And behind them, another man in a Hydra uniform, standing in front of a large – at least fifteen feet across and seven feet high – crate with SHIELD's insignia burned into it.

They were talking, the man in uniform and Bucky.

"What d'you think is gonna happen when you wake him up?" asked Barnes.

"He will cooper –"

"No he won't. _Captain America_? Not in a million years."

The leader chuckled. "Wishful thinking," he said. His accent was Mediterranean – Spanish, maybe – no, Italian.

"No, it's not. I've known him for twenty years. There's no way in hell he'll do what you want him to do, even if you can rebuild Zola's machine. And even if you do," he continues, raising his voice over the murmuring of two of the Hydra men, "it'll take forever to make him useful."

"It wasn't that hard with you, _asset_."

Barnes winced at the word but his face quickly hardened. "I was in shock. I was starving, I'd lost my arm – and I barely had any serum in me at the beginning. He's uninjured, at full strength. And if you take him everyone will be looking for him – SHIELD, the government, the army, they'll never stop."

"And they wouldn't with you?"

He scoffed. "Their priority's always been Rogers. They'll keep it quiet to keep him from going AWOL again, like he did in forty-three. Sure, they'll look, but they will always care more about keeping him safe."

Peggy's temper flared. Yes, she had to admit what he said was true but she hated that it was – and that Bucky knew it was as well.

She moved along the walkway to get a better view of the Hydra operatives, hoping – praying, even – that Barnes would keep their attention. Also praying that what he was saying wasn't what she thought he meant.

"I've been through the machine before," Bucky continued. "There are whole days I still can't remember. You said it yourself, Delgiacco – it gets worse the more times through."

Delgiacco. Antonio Delgiacco, an Italian who'd joined Hydra in the thirties and risen remarkably high in the organization given his non-science background. That explained the accent, then, and the reason why no one had been able to find him in the three years after the war ended.

"What is your point?" sneered Delgiacco. "That we should take you and leave Captain America?"

"Yes. I'm the better option. Can't take Rogers, SHIELD'll be after you for ages and besides, that crate'll slow you down. I can walk, I'm injured and I'm already halfway to what you need." Gunshots sounded out in the hallway; Barnes looked back at the door near him and added, "You don't have much time. Either we all die here or you walk away with an asset. It's an obvious –"

She shot the four gunmen in quick succession. She'd had enough of listening to this.

Carter kept her gun trained on Delgiacco as she climbed over the walkway railing but glanced at Barnes: his face held shock, surprise, fear. So he hadn't known she was there after all.

She dropped down onto the crate below her – the one that hopefully held Captain Rogers' frozen body – and told Delgiacco, "Hands in the air."

Bucky drew his pistol and pointed it in her direction. "Stop," he said.

" _What_?"

He repeated: "Stop. Drop the gun. Put your hands on your head."

Peggy realized he wasn't looking at her, rather something below and to her right. She glanced over and Delgiacco shifted where he stood; she refocused on him and said, "Don't even think about it."

In her periphery she saw a small man in a laboratory coat walk towards the sergeant, hands on his head as instructed. "Voorhees," said Bucky. "One of Zola's assistants. I wondered where he'd gone off too."

The far door slammed open and in charged Dugan, gun at the ready. He stopped short of Barnes and said, "Oh. Looks like you got 'em already. Carter, are you standing on Cap?"

"I don't imagine he minds," she replied testily. "Barnes, go find Morita for your hand. I'll debrief you later."

Bucky holstered his gun and walked out the way Dugan had come in.

Stark's assistant appeared minutes later and confirmed that the crate did indeed contain a giant block of ice – which Carter could have told him herself; she could feel the chill standing on it – and, more importantly, that Captain Rogers was in that block of ice.

Carter quickly ordered the ship's course altered back to Newark and telegraphed the news back to Manhattan. When they arrived – around ten in the evening, earlier than planned – they were met by near five dozen agents, all in a cheery mood.

In the chaos that followed when the ships docked – half the agents wanted to celebrate while the others tried to carry on their work and keep their fellows quiet – Carter lost track of Barnes. It was only after most of them had returned to the office in the city that she found one of the agents assigned to liaise with the 107th unit.

"Who, Barnes? Had a medic in Newark look at his shoulder – got shot there too, 'parently, though you couldn't really notice it – that serum, I tell ya – anyway, he got sent home after that," the agent told her. "Ma'am."

"I gave orders to hold him for debrief."

"What, tonight? It's oh-three-hundred, director. Bruin said it could wait."

Carter gave the man a sharp look and he quickly backpedaled: "I don't think he knew the order came from you, ma'am. I'll send a car out and –"

"When did he leave?"

"Uh... Bruin?"

"Barnes."

"Uh... oh-one-hundred, ma'am. Director. Director Carter, ma'am."

She ignored the agent's stammering and told him, "It's too late for that, then. Send Agent Bruin to my office."

"Yes, director."

 

* * *

* * *

 

The house was dark when a SHIELD agent dropped Bucky off. His watch – he wore it now on his right hand – said it was 2:43 in the morning, and he supposed Becca had already gone to sleep.

Bucky let himself in with his key, hung his light jacket up next to the others and managed to take his shoes off before falling asleep on his bed.

He still only slept in three-hour increments, though it was getting easier to fall back asleep after waking. But that morning, at 6:01 AM sharp, he woke up from a nightmare – he couldn't remember what, just that it had a haunting feeling he couldn't shake – with cold sweats and decided a hot shower would be better than forcing himself to stay in bed.

Ten minutes into the shower Becca shouted from her room, "Simon, if you use all the hot water I'm gonna dump your clothes in the tub!"

"When did Simon get here?" he called back.

"What – when did you get back?"

"Last night. This morning. Simon's here?"

"Shut up, both of you!" shouted Simon from another bedroom. "It's six in the morning!"

Their mother chimed in from the hallway: "Buck? When did you get back?"

He groaned. This was going to be a long day.

The water started running cold a minute later and he shut it off and got out. Even though it was still summer he preferred getting dressed in the warm bathroom, and he had gotten his underwear, pants and undershirt on when Becca came charging in.

"Sis!"

"Oh, come on. It's not like you're shirtless. And I need the toilet."

The toilet was hidden behind a bookshelf they used to hold towels but it wasn't like Becca would have cared if it hadn't been there. As it was, she rolled her eyes at her brother's expression and told him, "You changed my diapers. Don't tell me you really care."

"You're a med student, Becca. I think you've been desensitized to physical privacy. At least use a towel," he added, and tossed one to her.

At least she didn't make conversation while she peed.

Bucky stood at the sink, leaning his arms on the counter – not very heavily, he had learned his lesson after cracking the toilet cover his first morning home – and stared at the faucet drip. He replayed the previous day's events in his head, though it was mostly the image of Delgiacco standing in front of the crate holding Steve's body, with his words playing over it over and over again: " _It wasn't that hard with you, asset_."

It'd felt so long since he'd been called that, even though in reality it had only been two months. Funny how things could change so quickly.

 _Asset_. He'd forgotten how much he'd hated the word.

"I _said_ , skootch."

Bucky looked over and found Becca standing impatiently. "You gonna move?" she asked, then narrowed her eyes. "What's that on your back?"

"Nothing. Sink's all yours."

"No, hold on. _Stop_."

He stopped, because that was all he'd been doing for years: following orders.

His sister the medical student traced the scars through his undershirt and around the brace he wore. "It's –"

"Discipline," he finished.

"I was going to say keloids. I thought the army stopped using whipping for punishment after the Civil War."

"Actually before it started. And I never said it was from the army." He grabbed his shirt off the shelf and buttoned it up. Damn, his hand was bleeding again.

"Is that blood – Buck, what's that on your hand?"

He waved it quickly for her to see and opened the medicine cabinet for gauze. "Got shot yesterday. Not that bad, obviously."

"Yes, that's bad! All the bones –"

"– didn't get hit directly. I got 'em set, long as I keep my palm flat-ish for a week I'll be okay."

She shook her head and told him, "You have a _hole_ in your _hand_ , Buck. And it's not even bound – you had it in the shower, it could get infected."

"I don't get infections, Becca, and it takes me a week to heal a broken arm. Stark proved that last month. I'll be fine."

" _Did you say you were shot?_ " their mother shouted in Yiddish – the first sign of trouble – from the hallway.

" _It wasn't that bad, Ma!_ "

" _What do you mean, it wasn't that bad? You were shot!_ "

Simon groaned loudly and said, " _Would it kill you to be quiet, Bucky?_ "

" _I can say from experience that the answer to that is yes._ "

" _I'm going to make breakfast. Simon, get out here and welcome your brother home,_ " ordered Sara Barnes. " _You too, Buck._ "

Her sons came out into the hallway, said hello to each other and hugged. "What – what's your arm?" asked Simon.

"I, uh... I lost it when I fell. Ma didn't tell you?"

" _No_. Then how'd you get it?"

Simon wasn't going to be happy with the answer. "Uh..."

"It – _Hydra_."

"...Yeah."

"Why don't you take it off, then?"

" 'Cuz I can't."

"Why?"

"It's attached to my spine. Take it off, everything below my neck goes." Simon looked disappointed and Bucky added, "It's my own fault I lost the thing in the first place."

Simon snorted a laugh. "Because they asked permission from you before they put that thing on, obviously."

"Hey, an arm is an arm and it's better than no arm. We're not going to argue about this. Let's go eat breakfast. You coming, Becca?"

"In a minute."

The duty fell to Bucky to wake his father up – it was, after all, a remedial school day – and all five of them found themselves around the dining room table by 6:45 AM, eating scrambled eggs and oatmeal with apples. That was about as rich as foods that he could eat got, and his mother had decided to keep everyone to his restrictions – which no one was willing to complain about.

"So what're you doing exactly in Europe?" he asked his brother.

Simon swallowed his mouth full of food and replied, "There's seven of us. Four former English and American army, two camp survivors and me. Me and a couple others do a lot of the finding, other four do most of the retrieving. There's an open invitation for you, by the way."

Both their parents froze. "Nah," Bucky replied. "I've had enough of chasing Nazis around Europe."

"Really? What would you call what you were doing yesterday, then?" asked Becca, not looking up from her book. He'd told her exactly as much as he could before he left: Hydra, ocean, back before the parents; obviously he'd been wrong about that last one.

He pointed his spoon across the table at her. "That wasn't in Europe."

"But it was Nazis."

"Y'know, Hydra actually split with the regime in forty-four," he told her. "Then they started fighting each other, made our lives a lot easier."

"So that's what you were doing?" asked their father. "You didn't have enough of going after them during the war, you had to go and –"

"I had a really good reason, dad, and it –"

"– do you have some impulse to throw yourself into combat after all –"

"– _and you can read about why I did it when it gets put in the papers,_ " Bucky finished, loudly and in Yiddish. " _Because it will be. You can be sure of that._ "

He shoved a large forkful of scrambled eggs in his mouth. "The eggs are really good, ma."

"What are you planning to do today?" she asked.

"Probably get an angry phone call ordering me into the city for the debrief I skipped last night. Other than that, I was thinking of doing my laundry and maybe heading over to the library."

"Why would SHIELD care so much that you missed an interview?"

He shrugged. "I got shot twice. It's SOP for injuries. Carter doesn't like to skip procedure."

"Twice?" Becca asked. "Where was the other one?"

Bucky pointed at his shoulder. "Also through-and-through. You didn't notice it 'cuz you were too busy looking at the keloids."

"What're keloids?" said Simon.

"Scars. What're you doing today?"

"Well, I was gonna follow you around."

"SHIELD won't let you into their office."

"So I'll get lunch. How long can a debrief take?"

"...You've never seen Peggy Carter when she's angry. Anyways." He returned to his food and let Becca change the subject, telling a story of her coworker mixing up hold requests and handing a book on male anatomy to a sixty-year-old woman in front of her husband.

His sister and his father left for work, and Bucky began his loads of laundry.

Carter didn't call, though. He stayed at home until one in the afternoon, waiting for the phone to ring but it didn't. He hung the laundry out to dry in the back yard and visited Becca at her summer job in the library, returned and found that Simon hadn't taken any messages either.

Their father returned home – exhausted after a day of teaching the remedial students who didn't want to go to school any more than he did – and as they finished their dinner the doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," said Becca.

She went to open the door, and Bucky recognized the faint antiperspirant smell coming from the person outside.

"Ah," he said. "Here it comes."

"Miss Barnes," said the woman who'd knocked at the door. "Tell your brother we need to talk."

 

* * *

* * *

 

They took the library-office on the first floor. It was covered in books and maybe Carter would have cared to look at them if she were there under different circumstances. It also had a couple chairs but neither of them sat.

"What the hell were you thinking?" she asked Bucky.

"You're gonna have to be –"

"– more specific? Okay. The staging room, and that nonsense you were spouting about –"

"It wasn't nonsense. It was the truth."

"The _truth_? Do you really trust me so little –"

"Not you. Everyone else. We both know I don't matter in the grand scheme of things, not enough for the government to care."

She frowned deeply. "So you thought you could go and let – _and no one would care_? No one would go after them for you?"

"And you think I don't know what they would've done? You haven't found all their bases," he said. "I've been in some of them. I can handle myself."

" _You_ – this would have been useful to know two months ago!"

"I can barely remember them, Peg, and you've gotten most of them by now. I wasn't gonna waste your time hunting down bases you'd already taken off the map!"

"So it was honest, then? What you told them you'd do?"

He'd been staring at the bookcase, but refocused on Carter as he began to say, "I knew you wouldn't let it happen. I heard you –"

"Don't pull that shit with me, Barnes. I saw your face when I shot them, you had no idea that I was there."

"Really? Why d'you think that, because you were being quiet and it was dark?"

Obviously yes. "The others didn't notice me."

He breathed a laugh. "My mom's in the kitchen right now, baking. She just cracked an egg. Opened the fridge door. Got the milk out. She cooks when she gets nervous, you see, and from the amount of cookies I found on the counter this morning she probably spent a lot of time yesterday in there, after she came home and found out I'd gone with you. She's whisking the egg now.

"My dad's in the living room. He took a book off the shelf but he hasn't turned a page yet so he's probably not reading it. And my brother and my sister both are standing right outside this door, trying to figure out what we did yesterday and why you're so mad at me. Simon just took a step back. Becca's moving around, trying to avoid the creaky floorboard. Now they're both going up the stairs."

There was a list of serum effects tucked into Barnes' SHIELD file and it included the words "enhanced hearing", but she'd forgotten about that one. Peggy hadn't ever thought about it really, not with Steve, and now she wondered how many out-of-earshot conversations he had heard. How many Bucky had heard.

He walked towards her but stopped short of a foot away. "Don't fool yourself into thinking I didn't hear you on the walkway," he told her, "even with sneakers. I was surprised because when you didn't shoot them the first chance you had I decided you were waiting for something. Turns out you were just listening and had enough of what we were talking about."

"It wasn't a talk, Bucky, it was a negotiation."

"Yeah. I was stalling."

"Really? If I hadn't been there, would you have done it any differently?" she asked.

He shook his head. "You don't need to know."

"Yes, I do."

"As the head of SHIELD?"

She didn't have to think about her reply: "Yes, as the director of SHIELD. And as someone who considers you a friend."

Bucky nodded, looked her dead in the eye and said, "Yes."

"You would have gone with them?"

"Fighting the whole way, but yeah."

"Even though you thought no one would go after you?"

He squared his jaw and didn't reply.

"Well, you were wrong there," she told him.

"How so?"

Peggy sat down in a chair; she'd been eyeing it for a few minutes, since her feet had begun to ache. "Did Steve ever tell you how he got Stark to fly him over Germany?"

"No, just that he did. And you were there." Bucky pulled the other chair around and sat across the coffee table from her. "Why?"

"He was going to walk all the way to Germany. I found him before he left and told him there was a better way. I twisted Howard's arm until he agreed to fly us out." She paused until he met her gaze. "You were correct in thinking that most of SHIELD would care more about Steve. But I could have never lied to him about you. We probably would have ended up doing the same as five years ago, and coerced Stark into helping find you."

Peggy stood up. "You seem to have the same self-sacrificing tendencies that your best friend has," she told him. "It worries me more than it should, because it only seems to surface when you're dealing with each other."

"So you confirmed it? That he's alive?"

"Yes."

Bucky leaned back in his chair and let out a long, shaky breath. He ran his hand through his hair and asked, "How're you gonna wake him up?"

"Slowly. We have Zola's notes to guide us but it will take a while. A week, perhaps, maybe more."

"And you won't go to the press till he wakes up?"

She shook her head. "We can't keep this quiet, not like we did with you. The president knows already and I fear Congress will have both Howard's head and mine if we don't tell them."

"So how –"

"Day after tomorrow, once we confirm that he's in good health."

"So my family'll stop pestering me about it sooner than later. Good to know."

She couldn't help but smile. "You can tell them, as long as they keep it to themselves."

Bucky returned the expression, though awkwardly. "Well that's good to know because the window over there's been open this whole time and Becca's room is right above it." He raised his voice and added, "You're not very quiet when you're hanging out the window, Simon!"

"Yeah and you two aren't any less loud!" his brother called back. "But I still didn't catch what you were talking about."

"That's a relief," Peggy remarked, and then yelled out, "Steve!"

"What about him?" asked Becca.

Bucky replied, "That's what yesterday was about."

"Wait – _really_?"

"Yes. Now get back inside before you fall!"

"Is he alive or was it just the body 'cuz either way you'd've still gone to get him but if there's a funeral –"

"Get down here and we'll tell you!"

Bucky grinned – honestly, relieved – and stood. Carter heard the patter of footsteps come down the stairs and in moments the library door swung open.

"Alive or dead?" his sister demanded.

He looked over at Peggy – his expression serious now – and she understood what he wanted him to do. She held a straight face, looked at the younger woman and said, "Alive."

Becca squealed and hugged her brother; Simon – standing out in the hallway – called out to his parents to come over. Obviously Carter wasn't going to talk any further with Barnes, at least not that day.

"The office downtown, tomorrow morning," she told him. "Half an hour after opening."

He nodded and mouthed "I'll be there".

Moments later Mr. and Mrs. Barnes appeared, and Peggy took her leave.


	4. Where He Goes I Follow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas!
> 
> Descriptions of combat; mentions of experimentation, surgery and abuse.

Director Carter debriefed Sergeant Barnes personally the next afternoon; Sousa and Stark had both raised eyebrows when she claimed the interview but both wisely stayed silent on the topic.

He arrived at the front entrance at nine-thirty sharp and, as usual, the secretary phoned up to find an escort for him. Carter came down herself to fetch him, raising yet more eyebrows but not from anyone who mattered.

She'd chosen one of the nicer interrogation rooms – one with a built-in recording system – and sat with her back facing the observation glass. There were signs outside both doors marking the interview as closed, and the only one who'd listen was the woman maintaining the recording.

Peggy nodded at the viewing window after they had sat down, and heard a tap in reply. "Director Margaret Carter," she said. "August tenth, nineteen-forty-eight. Oh-ten-hundred. End-of-mission interview of former Sergeant James Barnes. Identify yourself."

"James Buchanan Barnes," said Bucky.

"Service number?"

"Three-two-five-five-seven-oh-three-eight."

"Good. I'll keep this shorter than your last one." He didn't respond, and she continued: "What was your assignment during the mission on the eighth of August of this year?"

"I took the port side of the boat –"

"Name of the boat?"

" _Bonnie Felicity_. Out of New York harbor, owned jointly by Howard Stark and SHIELD. Is that enough information on the boat?

"Yes. Continue."

"I had the port side, upper decks."

"Which decks?"

"Two to four. I boarded the boat with Falsworth, Morita, Sawyer and three SHIELD agents."

"Rosario, Coughlen and Nakano."

"Uh... I don't remember their names."

"Those were their names."

"If you say so." He cleared his throat. "We boarded at eighteen-thirty, which was the agreed-upon time for all three ships. Sawyer and I –"

"– and the agent accompanying you, who was he?"

"Coughlen. The three of us secured our objectives in about fifteen minutes – I know you're gonna ask about hostiles, I was just getting to that – we encountered ten hostiles. Casualties were three dead – two shot, one I hit a little too hard – four grievously injured – again two shot, one stabbed by me and one by Sawyer. The other three we bound and secured on our smaller boat."

"Who took them back to the boat?"

"Sawyer and Coughlen. I stayed behind and guarded the main access point to the rest of the ship."

"Injuries?"

"Sawyer cut his hand. Coughlen had a bullet graze his head. I got shot in the shoulder – it was probably aimed for my chest but Kip tripped and fell on me so the bullet hit below the shoulder bone."

"Kip?"

"Coughlen. He mentioned on the boat that all of us commandos – I hate that name, by the way – anyway, he said that we all had nicknames so we gave him one. He didn't like it."

"You were shot twice. How did the second happen?"

"I, uh..."

"You didn't stay in position like you were supposed to," she prompted.

Barnes glared at her. "I knew that if Steve's – _Captain Rogers'_ body was still on board then they would've put it somewhere where they could get it off board fast. They had to know we were coming – you said SHIELD had a boat shadowing them so they wouldn't slip away. But they might've been counting on a heads up, 'cuz you said they had our phone lines tapped."

That was one of the many things that Carter had confirmed after the fact: two agents sent into the sub-basement the night previously found the main telephone wire cut into and an odd device with an earpiece attached. Stark had added it to the list of things to take apart.

"Anyway, so I saw on the ship's schematic that there was some kind of hatch built into it the hull on the port side, near the bow, and a sort of artificial dock that you could make inside to hold a smaller boat. And above it was a loading deck with a trapdoor to lower heavy cargo into a boat waiting under it."

Carter knew the contraption he was referring to; she'd taken brief note of it while observing Barnes and Delgiacco's conversation. Dugan had positioned the fourth boat at that location to prevent any flight from the ship.

"I figured that's where they'd try to make a break for it, and I was right. And it was close by my position so I said what the hell."

"They shot you when you entered, then?"

He nodded. "I heard them talking through the wall – getting ready to open the trapdoor – so I charged in. Got hit in the hand but then Delgiacco recognized me and told his men to cease fire."

"Occupants of the compartment?"

"Uh, right. There were six men there – Delgiacco, Zola's assistant Voorhees and four foot soldiers. Delgiacco was the man in charge, he was in Hydra since the beginning in the thirties and was something like fifth-in-command. I guess Zola found him after he got released from prison. I, uh... he was in the room a lot when Zola..."

Barnes looked at her, a silent question: whether he had to recount the torture and experiments again.

"What was he present for?"

"A lot of the beatings. I think he did some of the flogging but I wasn't paying attention to that. And I'm pretty sure he liked watching me being put through the – the machine. We really need a better name for that thing," he added.

"We don't nickname evidence. What was Voorhees' role in Zola's experiments?"

"Same as all the other assistants – they did some of the cutting and injections but Zola did most of it himself. Man thought he was a lone genius and anyone else'd screw it up," said Bucky with a short, bitter laugh. "He was really impatient with them. There were a lot who came and went, Voorhees's one of the only ones I really remember 'cuz he was there almost the whole time."

"His role on the ship was to supervise the Captain's thawing. From what you remember, could he have successfully done it?"

Barnes shrugged. "Maybe. The icebox-thing they put me in after that first time was different than being frozen the regular way, it took a lot less time to defrost or so I heard, so maybe he would've screwed it up. Glad we don't have to find out."

"So am I," she admitted. "Back to the mission."

"Okay. So Voorhees was running around behind the crate and the other guys were doing their own things until I came rushing in –"

"You were near Jones' section of the ship, why didn't you fetch him or another agent to assist you?"

"I don't know. Didn't think there'd be enough time, maybe."

"But you heard multiple hostiles before you entered the –"

"I get it, Carter!" he said loudly. "It was irresponsible and dangerous and I should've waited for backup. You're right about all of that. Okay?"

Peggy frowned. "Go on," she told him.

"Okay." Barnes took a deep breath and continued, "I got shot through the hand – right hand, the one that isn't metal – and right after that Delgiacco told his men to stop firing."

"Did you discharge your weapon at all?"

"Once, but it was close quarters and I'm no good at that, so it went wide. Hit one of the crates, I think. So they ceased fire and I backed myself up against the wall, and that's about when you came in."

"Where in the room did I enter into?"

"The walkway one deck up. It wasn't lit so they didn't see you."

"Were you aware of my presence?"

"Yes. I heard you walking around. And I know what your deodorant smells like." She raised an eyebrow and he added, "My sense of smell's stronger too. It's not just sight and hearing, it's all of 'em."

Carter nodded. "What did you do after the ceasefire?"

"Well, the door had shut again and I figured no one was coming soon, so I, uh... I talked."

"About what?"

He looked her in eyes now, and said simply, "I tried to convince them to take me instead of Rogers."

"Was that your true intent?"

"No. I was stalling for time."

"Until?"

"Till more of our guys got there, or you started shooting. But you didn't, so I thought you were waiting for backup too."

"Hmm. Would you have completed the trade if you had convinced Delgiacco?"

"No," he lied.

Or perhaps he had lied to her the day before, but Carter suspected not.

"What ended the conversation you were carrying on with Delgiacco?"

"You. You killed all four of the guys with guns. It surprised me 'cuz it was sudden but then Voorhees came out with his own gun aimed at you and I pulled my weapon. Then Dugan came in and you ordered me to find a medic. I stayed on the bridge for the rest of the operation."

"Do you have any comments on the conduct of your companions during the mission?"

Bucky shook his head. "Nope, they were all good. 'Cept for Kip tripping into me but that was 'cuz one of the injured Hydra guys grabbed his leg and we thought he was out of it."

"All right." Carter turned back to the viewing pane and said, "That'll be all for the recording, Susanna."

She heard two taps, and a half-minute later the door to the observation room open and close.

"So, we're done then," said Bucky.

"No." She took a smaller tape recorder out of the bag at her feet, set it on the table and turned it on. "This is the second interview. I need to determine whether hiring you would be beneficial for the agency."

He looked down at the recording device and then back up at her. "I haven't asked for a job. And hiring goes through Zhou, not you. Stark said employment decisions couldn't be personal."

"Your conduct on the raid raised doubts about whether you'd be right for SHIELD. This is a precaution."

She turned on the recorder and sat back in her chair. "You were conscripted into the military," she told him.

He winced. "How'd you find out?"

"I was looking over an update on your physical condition when I noticed your service number. It began with a three. Enlisted soldiers' numbers begin with one."

"I didn't know that."

"It's not common knowledge but I've been around enough soldiers and veterans to notice the pattern. You only further confirm it."

They sat in silence for a moment, and then Bucky cleared his throat and said, "I didn't want to join the military. My dad's family was probably all gone and who knew what'd happen to my mom's. I didn't want mine to be another death in the family. I didn't know if my dad could handle it."

"Did Steve know?"

"No. Absolutely not. He kept getting rejected from the army and then I had to be drafted to go in? No. He probably thought I just changed my mind. That's what I told everyone."

"And after he rescued you from that camp, why did you stay?"

"Steve asked me to. I was already in Europe so I said what the hell. I mean, he didn't have to ask me – I wasn't gonna leave him there alone, even if he could handle himself now, and I wouldn't've lived with myself if something happened to him."

Peggy nodded. "Is your experience in the army the reason that you're reluctant to join SHIELD?"

He thought for a long time – half a minute, perhaps. "Yes," he replied finally. "Part of me thought that when the war ended I'd be done with the military. Not that I have anything against it – I don't wish I left in forty-three – but it wasn't supposed to last forever."

"SHIELD isn't the SSR," she pointed out.

"I know, Peg, but it's a lot of the same people. 'Cept they aren't in uniform now, and you're under some international coalition instead of the US army." He laughed quietly. "Not that it matters anymore, really."

"Why?"

"Steve's back. Or he will be in a week or two. And if he joins SHIELD – and trust me, he probably will – then I will too."

"It's that simple?"

"Where he goes I follow. Where I go he follows. It's been like that for twenty years and I don't think either of us is looking to change it. So yeah, it is that simple." He gestured to the recording device. "Is that all you wanted to ask?"

Was it? Would any of the other dozen questions she had mentally prepared be needed anymore?

"Yes," she said, ending the recording, "it was."

He nodded. "So should I expect a call from Agent Zhou sometime?"

"Maybe. I expect Congress will have something to say about it when I send the report to them this afternoon."

"You just had to interview me first, huh?" said Bucky sarcastically.

Peggy rolled her eyes. "We debriefed every other participant yesterday. Including those transcripts, the final report will be over two hundred pages long double-sided."

He whistled appreciatively. "You don't mess around."

"No, I certainly do not. You have an appointment with Girard, correct?"

"Yeah. I'm guessing you'll be asking him for an assessment too."

"Yes, I will be."

 

* * *

 

Steve Rogers awoke from three years of ice-induced sleep on a Wednesday morning, a week and a half after he had been recovered from Hydra. Directors Stark and Carter received the call simultaneously from two different doctors and the former strolled over to the Bronx hospital during his lunch break to say hello.

He reported to his co-director when he returned that the Captain was in good health and moderately good spirits. The nurses had already fallen for their patient, apparently, and Stark had to turn on all his charm to convince them not to give him a newspaper.

"They can't talk about SHIELD, or current events – and I made sure they knew that meant _nothing_ – and they can't ask him about the war," Stark told Carter.

She asked, "Did you tell him about –"

"SHIELD, you and me co-directing, all of it."

"But not –"

"I'm not an idiot, Peggy, I'm not gonna tell him about Barnes. He'd probably bust out of the hospital and can you _imagine_ the headlines." Carter sighed in relief and Stark added, "I told him you'd stop by later."

"I have a shipment payment to negotiate –"

"Oh, c'mon, Carter. Everyone knows you two were sweet on each other, no one'll judge you –"

"I got over him, Howard. Two years ago."

"So now you know you won't be acting on wishful thinking!"

"And him?" She stood from her chair and curled her firsts into balls. "What'll he be acting on?"

Stark grinned. "A memory from yesterday, as he thinks of it."

She blushed slightly – not much, as she had never been very embarrassed by her romantic liaisons but this was _Steve_ – and said, "I don't recall you being there, Howard."

"Everyone knows you kissed."

"And then he decided to become a kamikaze pilot!"

"Because his best friend had just died, give him a break."

"No, you don't understand, Howard – _I got over him_."

He stared at her, and asked, "Wouldn't it be better if you talked to Martinelli about this?"

"She'd tell me to stop thinking and make a move before it was too late."

"Bucky, then."

"He'd advise directness no matter my intent, but that's hard to do when I don't _know_ my intent."

"Well you don't have to make up your mind right now. At least go and say hi. It can't hurt. He's not gonna do anything, Peg, he's _Steve_."

She groaned and put her head in her hands. "Why am I asking you for advice? One of your ex-girlfriends almost had you kill everyone in Times Square."

"She wasn't an ex-girlfriend, she was –"

"– a Stark girl. Yes, I know." Peggy sighed. "I'll look in on him after I finish my work for the day."

"That's all I asked. See you at home!"

She finished her work for the day too soon, it felt like. The clock – usually so slow – ticked by all too quickly; when Sousa knocked on her door at 5PM to say goodnight she could scarcely believe it.

"Don't get too interested in the work, Carter," he said with a grin. "You could be here all night."

" _Thank you_ , Daniel," she replied, sarcasm heavy in her voice.

"No problem, Peg. See you tomorrow."

Well. She couldn't ignore it anymore.

She took a taxi to the Bronx hospital and passed the guards – plainclothes SHIELD agents, all of them in the building were, but armed – placed at a side entrance and found a nurse to direct her to the room of Patient Y.

She stopped in front of the door and waited for the guard to unlock the door. Here she went.

Steve was reading a book – _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ – but put it down when she entered. "Hi," he said.

"Hello. How are you feeling?"

"Warm." He laughed. "But I guess everything is warm compared to being frozen. One of the nurses said it'd been three years."

Yes – three very long years, and Peggy's heart was already wrenching again at the sight of Steve's smile. "Yes," she said. "August of forty-eight."

"Nurses only told me the year. Dunno why they won't give me a paper," he muttered.

"Because we have to debrief you," she told him. "And you'd be too distracted by the news to complete the interview."

"How much could've changed?"

"You'd be surprised. But until we debrief you you'll have to stick to your novels."

"What is there to talk about?"

 _Oh, Steve._ "We've uncovered some new accounts regarding your actions during the war. They aren't negative in any way but we have to confirm the claims."

"What claims? I didn't lie about anything –"

"We know you didn't. It's just a formality."

He sighed dramatically. "How long?"

"Will the debrief be? Not long at all."

"No. Until I get out of here."

"Just a few days. We're in the Bronx right now, headquarters is in Manhattan. Normally the doctors would keep someone who'd been frozen alive in the hospital longer, but there's nothing about you that's normal, is there?"

Steve frowned, and Peggy realized she should have phrased her words better. "Are you mad at me? Is it because of the plane?" he asked.

Yes, in fact she was upset with him and the plane was only half of it. "Get some rest," she said instead of answering him. "It'll get you out sooner."

 

* * *

* * *

 

Stark called Barnes into the lab two weeks after the mission on the _Bonnie Felicity_. The secretary at the front desk waved him without asking for his ID – he had to insist to get a visitor's pass – and he was stared at by everyone he passed in the hallway.

So, news of the mission had gotten around. Or maybe Carter had allowed access to the debrief recording. Or Steve had woken up and nobody bothered to tell Bucky, though he considered that unlikely.

"You should've got a real ID by now," Stark told him when he walked into the lab with the pass clipped to his jacket.

"I don't work for SHIELD," replied Bucky.

The co-director made a face. "You basically do, Buck. Tell you what, we'll go up to my office after this and get my secretary to write up the form."

"I thought this was your office."

"Nah, I need somewhere to dump all the paperwork."

"Anyway, you mentioned something about lab tests on the phone?"

"Right, yeah. We put your blood through the microscope and then Steve's, and also isolated some strains of the serum."

"And?"

Howard handed him a small binder and leaned against a counter. Bucky found the conclusion about halfway in – the rest was just appendices – and read through it.

" 'Results show moderate differences in chemical structure and effects on subjects exposed to it' – you put it in something?"

"Yeah, guinea pigs. They're all dead now."

"From the exposure or –"

"We put 'em down. Super-strength rodents isn't on my to-invent list for the week. Plus most of 'em had already died."

"Okay. Have you figured out why Steve and I didn't?"

"Nope," said the director cheerfully. Bucky rolled his eyes.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Agent Lutz accompanied Captain Rogers from the hospital to SHIELD's building in Manhattan. He didn't speak much but glanced up every now and again and stare, until Steve would get annoyed and meet his gaze, and Lutz would refocus on the road in front of them. It was an unending loop.

It felt weirdly similar to the ride he'd take two – no, five – years ago – through the city, except this time he didn't feel the need to talk to the other person in the car with him. He got the feeling that if he started pointing out all the places they passed where he'd gotten into fights that Lutz would think he was making things up.

He wouldn't have done it anyway; Bucky had gotten him out of most of those fights, and he didn't want to think about him. Thinking about his best friend had put him in a place where he decided to crash his plan instead of trying to divert it, and he didn't want to do anything else that stupid.

They entered the building through an underground level that looked like a parking lot built into the building. "It's the first building in the city with one," explained Agent Lutz. "It just finished construction a few months ago. We have better security than the last building. All sorts of wacky stuff happened in there." He laughed to himself.

"Such as?" said Steve.

Lutz, surprised, recovered himself quickly – maybe he'd been convinced that the Captain wouldn't talk to him – and said, "Uh, well, a few years ago – back when we were still the SSR – a there was this Russian spy ring and, uh, long story short this doc hypnotized the Chief and strapped a bomb to his chest. They couldn't get it off so Dooley jumped out the window and exploded in midair."

"That's not weird, that's dangerous."

"Weird, dangerous – there isn't really a line between them for us. Both of the directors were involved in it, too. So, uh, we're gonna take the elevator to the fourth floor and wait for an agent to debrief you up there."

Steve nodded. "Lead the way."

He'd never seen an elevator with self-moving doors before; he'd rarely even been in them anyway, and those had been rickety and undoubtedly unsafe. This car, though, moved much more smoothly and didn't rattle quite as much. New building, new technology, he supposed.

They arrived at the fourth floor and the agent led Rogers through a few hallways – they passed a few other people, all of who deliberately ignored them – and into a room at side of the building.

"This is one of the nice interview rooms," Lutz told him. "I'll wait here with you until the debrief."

Steve looked around the room: a table with two chairs opposite each other, a counter that held some sort of recording device, a couple paintings on the wall and some potted plants on the windowsill.

He took the chair closer to the window; Lutz stayed standing.

The clock on the wall said twenty minutes passed before the door opened again. Steve stood and was halfway to attention when Peggy Carter entered the room.

"Captain," she said. "You may return to your desk now, Agent Lutz."

"Yes, ma'am."

He closed the door behind him and Peggy walked over to the counter. She switched on the machine and said, "Director Margaret Carter," she said. "August twenty-third, nineteen-forty-eight. Eleven-hundred. Interview for the record of Captain Steven Rogers. Identify yourself by your full name."

"Steven Grant Rogers."

"All right."

 

* * *

* * *

 

"I was going through one of Zola's notebooks and found some old work on the serum," Stark said as he set down a tray of petri dishes he'd pulled out of a refrigerator, "and it was interesting 'cuz apparently he'd started by thinking about it like a vaccine. You know how vaccines work?"

"Kind of."

"You get exposed to it once. The body sees it's harmful and attacks it – that's why you get fevers when you get sick – but while it gets rid of it its defense to further bugs gets stronger. Zola thought he could introduce the serum that way and kickstart the physical changes by way of the immune system."

The director pulled up a stool and set to inspecting the dishes one by one through a microscope.

"Okay – but I'm guessing that didn't work?"

"Nope. Body couldn't tell the serum apart from its own cells and started attacking itself – which is like what happens with Lupus, interestingly. Anyway, then Erskine started working with Zola and they switched tactics. They still had to work with injecting it into the bloodstream but they decided to..."

Stark's voice faded into the background as Bucky skimmed the report procedure, observations and results: they'd reproduced both strains of serum in the lab and injected them into thirty guinea pigs each in varying amounts, intervals and times. The ones that hadn't died within forty-eight hours were put down soon after, but before they all croaked some had shown increased aggression, strength and speed.

Sixty guinea pigs. That was a lot of dead rodents.

"...So when Cap woke up we took some more samples and the incidence of the serum was higher – not as high as yours though – that's in the results page, thirty-seven I think –

Bucky processed Stark's words and froze. "What did you just say?"

"You'd think someone with super-hearing would be a better listener," Stark said, to no one in particular; all the lab techs had left when Bucky had entered the room. He adjusted a dial on the microscope and wrote something down in a notebook.

" _Stark_."

The director didn't even look. "He's upstairs being debriefed. Carter wouldn't do it until the docs gave the green light, and now she's not sure where to put him up for the night. Can't go back to the hospital, can't stay in my house 'cuz apparently that's _too forward_ –"

"What floor?" asked Bucky. He was running through the building's layout in his mind – which staircases led to certain levels, what doors were locked and which he could get open with a good kick –

– _shit_ – he hadn't even known Steve was awake, let alone out of the hospital and _in the building_ –

"That stuff's usually on the higher levels. They might be using one of the conference rooms, though, so maybe the admin floor."

He switched gears as he remembered that Howard Stark was co-director. "And it's a complete coincidence that you dragged me up here today, of all days?"

"Reports get done when they get done. Blame the tech who actually wrote the thing."

Bucky slammed his hand down on the counter; in the next room, two lab assistants jumped. "Cut the bullshit, Stark."

Finally, Howard looked up. "Fourth floor, room fifty-seven-A. Take stairwell E," he called out, because Bucky was halfway out the door. "I had someone unlock it half an hour ago."

He stopped himself, turned around and said, "Thank you."

The director grinned. "I'll be up when I'm done here. Best of luck."

 

* * *

* * *

 

Carter had chosen a room in full view of the fourth-floor bullpen. Because she was director and he was Captain America, and there were too many rumors flying around anyways, she left the two windows to the desks unshuttered.

"I don't imagine this will take long," she told Steve.

He waved a hand at the paper in front of her. "Go ahead."

The paper was for show, as was the pen; she had only one question to ask – well, on the record anyway – and was certain his answer would be just as short.

"In October of nineteen forty three," Peggy began, "did you lie to General Phillips, Howard Stark and myself about your activities inside the Hydra camp you destroyed?"

Well, at least she could still catch him off-guard. "What?"

"Let me rephrase: we know you lied in your account of that evening, as did Sergeant Barnes."

Steve winced at the name, and Peggy remembered that for him it had been a week, no more, since he'd seen Bucky fall from that accursed train.

She continued: "You both failed to inform us of the experiments that Arnim Zola had conducted on –"

"What does it matter, Peg?" he asked. "He's dead, it's _done_. How did you even find out about that? Did Zola tell you or –"

"Doctor Zola is dead. He bit a cyanide capsule three months ago in the middle of an interrogation."

"So he didn't tell you. Then who –?"

He cut off suddenly, the truth dawning on his face. "Where is he?" he demanded.

"Captain –"

Rogers stood up. His voice was sharp, unforgiving as he repeated himself: " _Where is he_?"

" _Steve –_ "

Peggy was interrupted by a knock on the glass of the door that they both turned towards. The person stood out of sight next to the entrance, only their right arm – sleeve rolled up – was visible.

She knew that arm; she recognized the four lines across the wrist, three more down his forearm, and scar tissue from a bullet shot two weeks ago on the palm of his hand.

She looked back at Steve. "Wait here. _I said wait_."

Captain Rogers – halfway around the table towards the door – held himself still. Director Carter stared him down for a good ten seconds before being satisfied that he wouldn't move while she left the room.

Bucky had moved down the wall, so that he couldn't be seen out the door's small glass window. "That was quick. I thought it'd take longer to get him shouting," he said after Peggy had closed the door. Not for the first time, she was glad she'd insisted the rooms be made as soundproof as possible.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she whispered back.

"Stark had lab results. My serum, Steve's serum, that sort of thing." He inclined his head at the door. "Thought it'd be funny if he let slip Steve was awake while I was reading the report."

Typical Howard. "Where is he now?"

"Still downstairs. Told me how to get up here. Turns out sprinting up steps is a lot easier when you have an Olympic runner's stamina."

And of course, Bucky didn't even look out of breath. Sometimes Peggy envied the effects the serum had on his physical abilities – she didn't even _want_ to know what it did in the bedroom – but every time she'd remember what he'd experienced in the process of gaining that strength, and decided she was content with her normal human efforts.

"Y'know, I could've given you some advice about this." He waved his good hand at the door. "Catching him up. But I 'spect you fell back on the cold hard-ass approach."

"Am I that predictable?"

"Hey, it scares the shit out of most people. I'd spill my guts if you used it on me. But Steve..." He grinned. "I thought you'd remember it didn't work on him."

She rolled her eyes. "I'll put him out of his misery, I suppose. Wait here."

Of course, Rogers hadn't stayed still. "Sit," she told him, and he sat.

"One last thing and then you can go," Peggy said, reminding herself to keep her voice softer, kinder. "Why did you do it?"

He looked up at her. "Crash the plane?"

"Why didn't you tell anyone what Zola did to your best friend?" she clarified; the other question she'd ask him later, away from the recording tape and the curious eyes of all of her agents, although she was certain she already knew the answer.

"I... I didn't want him put through all the tests. The needles and the poking and prodding. He'd had enough of that. I didn't think they'd actually _done_ anything," he added. "Bucky didn't notice any changes so I didn't think there was anything to it."

"Of course he didn't tell you," she murmured. "You were wrapped up in your own newfound abilities, leading your unit."

Steve leaned forward. " _Nothing about him had changed_ – physically, at least –"

"And that's your problem, Steve. You have no trouble seeing the forest through the trees, it's just the trees that you never notice. And no, you wouldn't have seen the changes unless you'd paid attention. He wasn't given much, just enough to keep him alive after he fell. They gave him more later."

" 'They' – Hydra. Zola. That's why you were interrogating him."

"Not the exact reason, but yes. After we discovered that Zola had begun to rebuild Hydra we went about taking down their facilities. That's where were found him. Almost three months ago." She paused, then said, "Stark called him into his laboratory today to look at some test results."

That spark flared in his eyes – the eagerness she had forgotten he could have, her memories of his subtle expressions drowned out by photos and those last, sad days. The light of his eyes flooded her heart, swept her mind away.

Peggy collected herself – she only had to keep up the pretense for another few seconds – and told Steve, "First staircase on the left. It's down in the basement, you can't miss it."

" _Thank you_ ," he said. They stood up at the same time and hugged her lightly. "I'm sorry. And I'm sorry I didn't tell you that before."

She pulled herself back and said, "Go."

And then doubled over in silent laughter, crying a little too. There were too many emotions roiling around in her at the moment, and she was very glad that no one would be paying much attention to her for at least the next minute.

Oh, damn. She hadn't shut off the recording.

 

* * *

* * *

 

Peggy had left the door open when she'd gone back into the room, probably for its own benefit as Steve had a habit – one Bucky had made fun of him for – of forgetting his own strength when it came to them. He'd done it before the serum too, slamming doors, but back then they would barely make a noise; now they broke with ease.

Inside the room they spoke quietly, but Bucky would have been able to hear them even if the bullpen full of agents in front of him hadn't gone dead silent. Half of the eyes were on the windows into the interview room, the other half on Bucky. He stared at the wall.

"You have no trouble seeing the forest through the trees," Peggy told his best friend, "it's just the trees that you never notice."

He'd used those words to describe Steve once before –it had been during the war – oh, Carter, she had an elephant's memory –

"First staircase on the left," she said, and he had to keep himself from laughing.

"Thank you." He heard them hug – heard Steve whisper that he was sorry – and then Peggy told him to go and that was the cue Bucky had been waiting for.

Steve rushed out of the room and was in the middle of turning left – towards the stairs Bucky had taken up from the lab, towards Bucky himself – when his best friend grabbed him and hugged him tightly.

Up until that moment, Bucky hadn't realized just how much he'd missed him.

 

* * *

* * *

 

"What – what happened to your arm?" asked Steve.

Well, Peggy reasoned, at least could focus his mind on the important things during combat.

"Lost it," Bucky said, loudly, "same as happened to your head, so says Carter. What the _hell_ were you thinking – crashing a plane into the arctic with no exit plan –"

They were visible now through the doorway; Steve had backed up at the force of the embrace, caught completely off-guard. He stared, stunned, at his best friend as Bucky berated him.

"There wasn't another way –" he started to say, before being cut off:

"Give your coordinates, land the plane, find a jacket and wait a safe distance. _For fuck's sake_ , _Rogers_ –"

Steve surged forward and pulled Bucky into a hug of his own.


	5. The Sacrifices People Make

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this is late. Hectic week and jetlag distracted me. In any case, happy new year to all of you!
> 
> Descriptions of torture, suicide attempts, memory loss and ADHD.

Steve kept a hold of his best friend until Bucky muttered, " _Now I can't breathe_."

Irish – he'd spoken in Irish. Steve hadn't heard that language in years; he thought Bucky had forgotten it.

He let go and backed up to get a better look at him. The left arm was metal – Steve had felt it before seeing it, and now that he looked it was clearly Zola's design – and he had some faded scar on his neck but otherwise it was the same Bucky Barnes as had fallen from that train.

"So, uh..." he said, "how are you?"

"Well, I think you fractured a couple of my ribs but otherwise I'm peachy. C'mon." Bucky grabbed Steve's arm. "Stark's probably done with whatever the hell he was doing to ignore me."

"You can't go anywhere without an escort!" yelled Peggy from the interview room.

"Tell that to Stark," Bucky called back, " 'cuz he was five seconds away from having me sign the paperwork before a tech distracted him."

"Coughlen!"

A man – an agent – dressed in a suit appeared out of the bullpen. "Ma'am?"

"Try not to lose them."

Bucky snickered but Steve saw a bit of irritation in his eyes. Still, his voice was light as he said, "Let's go, Kip."

The agent, though, was staring dumbstruck at Steve.

"If you start walking he'll follow you," Bucky whispered loudly. Coughlen's face cleared and he scowled.

"I saved your life two weeks ago," he told him. " _You're welcome_." Bucky ignored him and started walking. "And stop calling me that!"

They reached the staircase – door propped open, and Coughlen muttered that it shouldn't be – and Bucky almost pulled Steve down four flights of stairs. It reminded him of before the serum, the war, and the irritation he'd catch sometimes in Bucky's eyes on the front lines when he thought he wasn't looking – annoyance that now Steve was the bigger one, that he'd lost the ability to protect him.

Bucky had never brought it up but Steve had noticed. He probably should have said something – he should have mentioned the experimentation too – but as Peggy said he'd been too caught up in the war to notice.

And then his best friend had fallen off the train and none of it mattered anymore.

Well, he supposed, it still didn't. Their strengths were equal now.

The agent said, "Hold on," when they got to the bottom. "You need special authorization to go in there."

"I was in here ten minutes ago," Bucky told him, and kept walking.

"Uh..."

He rolled his eyes and opened one of the doors. "Stark! Oh, Harrison. Where's the director?"

"He's in the –" Harrison looked past the doorway and, like everyone else Steve had encountered in the past five days, lost his train of thought. "Um, the, uh..."

"The director is dissecting a guinea pig," the lab assistant next to him – female, stubbornly keeping her eyes on her work – said.

Bucky asked her, "I thought he threw them out already."

"Did he tell you that?"

"Well – they _died_ , so –"

"So he's finishing the last necropsies. It's gonna be the same as all the others, which is why I wrote the report before we did them all."

"What'd they die of?"

The assistant looked up and directly at Bucky, though she glanced at Steve for a moment. "Their hearts burst."

"That's – you're being metaphorical –"

"No I'm not. Kaboom, torn to shreds. So we still don't know how you two survived. C'mon, Rick, let's give 'em the space," she said, and dragged her pad of paper and Harrison into a different room.

"Well I guess we have the room then," said Bucky; he sat down on one of the stools and gestured for Steve to take the other. "If Stark's dissecting guinea pigs I don't wanna be there."

"They were doing experiments with the serum?" asked Steve.

"Yeah. We have different strains and they wanted to figure out what the variations were. There's a report somewhere here..."

Bucky found a binder and handed it over. "It's mostly science jumble. The conclusion's what you want."

" 'Moderate differences in effects on subjects exposed to it'," read Steve. "So what're the differences?"

"Between us? I don't know. Stark has his notes from during the war but apparently he didn't write down _how_ much of a difference the serum made, just that there was one. He'll probably put you through a physical at some point. Get ready to have your arm broken."

Steve looked up from a graph in the conclusion and asked, "That was a joke, right?"

"Nope. My parents were upset but compared to the last three years the whole thing was a cakewalk. Stark actually _asked_ whether it'd be okay to break it."

"And how long did it take to heal?"

"A week. Actually less but they included the time it was sore but technically healed. Becca – she's in medical school now – well, when she found out she started reciting the Hippocratic Oath and I had to let her know that I broke it myself."

" _What_?"

"Yeah. They had three guys trying all at once and I said stop and just..." He made a twisting motion with his left hand – the metal one. "Hurt a little but after everything else it was nothing."

That was twice now that he'd made vague callbacks to his experience with Zola the second time around, and Steve said, "All right, I'll bite. What happened?"

"Well, let's see..." Bucky made a fist and held his first finger up. "Got vivisected twice, tried to kill myself four times" – a second finger – "Zola figured out a refreeze method so most of that time I wasn't even _conscious_ " – a third – "and then there was this time I was being – how did Delgiacco say it – right, _recalcitrant_ , so they thought maybe flogging would work, and _that_ is the story behind most of the scars on my back and legs. Can't sleep on my back anymore."

He curled his fingers back in and sighed. "That's the summary."

"And the arm," Steve found himself saying, even though honestly he should've been too horrified to speak, let alone prompt his best friend to talk about it _more_.

Bucky echoed, "And the arm. Second most painful thing I went through."

"The first being...?"

"Classified." He shrugged. "Ask Stark when he comes back from biology lab. Or Carter, if she ever makes it down here."

Steve was still thinking about the prosthetic. "You sure there's no way to get it off?"

"And replace it with what? It's a fully-functional arm."

That was as good as an answer. "So what'll happen if you try?"

"It'll destroy my spine. As it is it's twice as heavy as a normal arm and I have to wear a brace to keep it from bringing down my back."

"But you're okay with it?"

Bucky spoke sharply: "If I got something good out of the last three years then this is it. Lost an arm, get an arm. Nothing more'n that matters anymore."

"Glad to see you're still annoyingly optimistic," muttered Steve.

His best friend laughed. "I've gotten into two different arguments with Simon about this in the past week, that's why you got that answer. And trust me, you don't want to pick a fight your – how many days have you been up for?"

"What, you don't know?"

"I didn't find out you were _awake_ till Stark let it slip half an hour ago, let alone _in the building_."

"Oh."

Bucky gestured to the binder. "Finish reading that, some of the things near the end are interesting."

Steve returned to the report but he didn't read any further; he tried to focus on the words but the meanings escaped him. Finally he sighed, closed the binder and leaned back in his chair.

"Sorry, I, uh..."

"Yeah, I realized I might've been throwing things at you too fast," his best friend replied, smiling apologetically. "Take all the time you need."

"Thanks."

He leaned back on his stool and let out a long breath.

Last week – more than three years ago in reality but to Steve it was just last week – he'd watched Bucky fall from the train. Heard him scream until he stopped – from hitting the rocks below or figuring it was a waste of effort, Steve didn't know. He wanted to ask but equally so he didn't want to know the answer.

But now, a week later, his best friend was _alive_. He was standing and breathing and looking as happy and content as he'd been before the war. And he was calmly recounting three years' worth of torture at Zola's hands.

When did the army even _let_ Zola out of prison? And why? One of the nurses at the hospital had mentioned a tribunal – but the scientist wasn't high enough to be tried in there, she'd said it was for the regime's top men –

A more chilling though surfaced in Steve's head: what had Zola been trying to do with Bucky? He put a prosthetic on him that looked more like a weapon than anything else –

"Did you two get some bad news I haven't heard yet?" asked Stark. "You're usually pretty chatty, as I remember."

He stood with a bloody apron over his usual clothes, removing thick gloves and grinning down at Steve.

Bucky looked over at him. "No, he just needed a minute. Got overwhelmed."

"Not surprised by that. Least you got a few days to get used to the time jump," he told Steve, but the other man shook his head.

"You gave me five days of isolation before putting me in a room and then interrogating me about something that happened five years ago."

"Which he didn't actually do," Bucky added. "Just didn't tell anyone about."

"Sound like anyone else, Barnes?"

"Uh..."

Stark gave him an unimpressed look. "If you wanted to look clueless you could've at least made an effort. I heard your post-mission interview. Carter put it in the Congress's report, remember."

" 'Post-mission'? Did something happen that I don't know about?" asked Steve.

Bucky grimaced. "Yeah, uh, so, _fun story_..."

 

* * *

 

Peggy met them down in the lab's break room when the clock hit twelve noon. She'd brought lunch: soup in a large pot and a plate piled high with sandwiches.

Bucky scarfed down a couple bowls of soup and some sandwiches and then asked Stark if he could use the telephone.

"Go right ahead," Stark replied.

The phone was in the next room over, and Bucky left the door open as he spoke. " _Dad,_ " Steve heard him say, " _Simon went back to Europe so his bedroom is the guest bedroom, right?_ "

" _Well – yes, I suppose so,_ " Josef Barnes replied through the phone.

" _So there wouldn't be a problem if someone else took the guest bedroom?_ "

" _It's never a problem for Steve to stay with us._ "

Bucky grinned. " _Just checking._ "

His father muttered something that Steve couldn't make out. Bucky laughed, glanced back at Steve through the glass and frowned – thinking, not worried. " _Yeah,_ " he replied, " _that'd be good. I forgot you did that._ "

Steve gave him an inquisitive look and Bucky rolled his eyes. " _Make sure Mom makes a lot of food._ "

" _Do you have any suggestions for dishes?_ "

" _Hey, Steve!_ " he shouted. " _Meat or dairy?_ "

" _Meat!_ "

"What was that?" asked Stark.

"He was asking about dinner."

"In German?"

"Yiddish."

"Why do you know Yiddish?"

"He knows Yiddish and they both know Irish," Peggy told him.

"Why Irish?"

"It was my first language," Steve explained. "My mom taught it to me."

"You're Irish?"

"...Yeah. You didn't know?"

Bucky hung up the phone and returned. "We have most of your things in the basement," he told Steve. "Clothes obviously won't fit but your mom kept some of your dad's and he was giant, right?"

"Yeah, six-three."

"Still taller than you."

"And I'm taller than _you_."

"By an inch!"

Peggy asked, "What else did they keep?"

"Uh – tablecloths, books, the family bible, your mom's clothes that you didn't sell," he recounted to Steve. "Simon and I went through it all last week, you can take a look tomorrow."

" 'Tomorrow'?" she echoed.

"Yeah. If he can't sleep at Stark's place then he'll stay with us on Long Island."

She frowned. "When was this decided?"

"When his dad said they had a spare bedroom," said Steve. "They won't mind."

"You're still SHIELD's responsibility," she said. "If something were to happen –"

"What'd happen? It's the same as I've done a hundred times before –"

"That's what we were thinking before the train in Germany too and –"

"I dunno about you," Bucky interjected, "but _I_ was thinking that that zip line was payback for that time Steve threw up on a coaster at Cony –"

"Stop deflecting. Security has to be maintained –"

"I split a guy's skull with a crowbar, Carter. You were there, you remember. Safety's not a problem."

"And your family's?" she asked, voice tight. "You and Rogers may need not care but they're the first ones Hydra would go after –"

"– so post a guard or let me stay at Stark's," Steve told her. "C'mon, Peg. Please."

Peggy looked at him, and then Bucky, and lastly Stark – he had leaned his chair back to watch the three of them argue – and softened. "All right. Two guards, and keep all the doors locked."

"I grew up in Brooklyn, Carter," said Bucky with a grin on his face. "That's a habit we aren't kicking anytime soon."

 

* * *

* * *

 

Bucky was quiet on the drive home.

It didn't help that there were two SHIELD agents in the front seats of the car. Steve still fell back on a laconic quietness that discouraged the people around him from talking; Bucky recalled someone during the war describing his best friend's nature as "somber thoughtfulness", but before the serum he'd been labeled antisocial and hostile.

The difference, Bucky supposed, was nine inches and a cure for asthma.

Truth be told they were both wrapped up in their own thoughts and unintentionally created a heavy silence in the car, and Bucky felt sorry for the agents. One had turned on the radio once they crossed the bridge into Long Island but it only made the lack of conversation more obvious.

Peggy had shown up in the garage while they'd been preparing to leave and pulled him aside – well, two rooms aside with both doors shut, so that Steve wouldn't hear, and they'd spoken in whisper just in case. "Have you told him about the freezing?" she'd asked.

"Yeah. Why?"

"What about the memory –"

"No, that's classified."

"As is the freezing but you had no problem –"

"It slipped out, okay? And it's not like he wouldn't've noticed that I didn't look any much older, 'specially compared to you and Stark."

"He'll find out eventually. If you tell him now –"

"Can't I catch up with my best friend without having to talk about all this shit?"

She'd frowned. "He won't trust you if you aren't open with him."

"It's my relationship, Peg," he'd told her, warning in his voice: she was encroaching and he wanted her to back off.

"And if what you said was right, two of my future agents," she'd fired back. "If you're to be working together I'd rather him not think you're hiding things. Especially after you hid the initial effects of the serum from him."

He'd looked away, trying to think of a winning counter-argument besides "mind your own business", and Carter had added, "What are the chances he wouldn't observe it on his own?"

Dammit. "Not very high," Bucky had admitted.

"So you'll tell him? Or will I tomorrow?"

"If I get some time alone I'll tell him."

"I'll take that. Have a good time with your family. Be back tomorrow by fourteen-hundred. Stay safe."

He'd muttered a reply – "Have a good night too" or something vague like that – and walked back to the garage, and the car, and Steve.

Her words stuck in his head, though, and as much as he tried he couldn't let them go.

It was 5PM; he'd spent six straight hours with his best friend, told him all about most of the torture – sparing, of course, the memory machine – hell, he'd even told him about the four times he'd tried to kill himself.

That had been a rough moment. He'd shown him the scars in order – the faint line across his neck, the four bullet holes in his chest and the lines on his arm; the last ones were sloppy because he wasn't used to holding a knife with his left hand, but he'd been so strong he'd almost cut clean through the bone anyway. It was a miracle, the doctors said, that his muscles were undamaged.

They hadn't been undamaged, though – Zola had repaired them, all the while lecturing his asset on the foolishness of injuring himself.

There were no scars on his forehead, and Bucky considered himself lucky for that. He'd done it no more than a day before SHIELD had stormed the compound and the first thing the doctors in Baltimore had done was stitch the skin up.

Steve's reaction to his best friend's easy recounting – horrified, speechless, the guilt on his face obvious – was what made him think he shouldn't tell him about the memory machine. He didn't have to know about it; he shouldn't have to feel any more guilt than he already did for not keeping Bucky from falling, or not looking for him afterwards because he'd been convinced he was dead.

None of it was his fault but he'd still think it was. Bucky knew Steve too well to suppose he'd believe otherwise.

He looked over at his best friend when they entered the right neighborhood – like Bucky, Steve had been watching the side mirror for any cars following, Peggy's warnings evidently weighing on both their minds – and Steve noticed, and gave a small smile in return.

He still hadn't gotten a handle on all of it. Bucky could tell; his body language was the same as it had been before the serum. He was reeling, shocked and relieved and eager and more than a little bit overwhelmed.

He knew his family wouldn't help, so he'd kept them in the city longer than they had to. "He needs some time" were the magic words, ones he'd used liberally, and they'd done the trick.

Peggy would stall with Congress, he knew, until she thought Steve could handle the attention. Bucky's own experience in front of the committee hadn't been that bad – one day in June, a couple weeks after he'd been discharged, when he and Stark took the train down to Washington and visited some museums before the brief afternoon interview that involved more congratulations and "thank you for your service"s than questions – but the press was the real problem.

Granted, they hadn't swarmed like they did with movie stars, but the knowledge that his every move in DC was being tracked, photographed and likely published in the newspaper had not made Bucky any more comfortable to be there.

"Ah, damn," muttered the agent driving. Bucky looked up and out and saw they'd hit a traffic jam – rather a confusing mess of cars in the intersection in front of them. Some idiot had probably gotten drunk again – it was a Friday, payday, and the habit of drinking through your wages appealed to a lot of veterans – run the red light and crashed.

"Turn around, head back to the last cross street and turn right," he told the driver. "There's a back way."

 

* * *

* * *

 

It was a nice house: two stories, a driveway that sloped down the hill it was built on, with dark blue windows and doors. Blue was Josef Barnes' favorite color, he recalled.

They pulled into the driveway and Steve heard the front door open; he looked and saw Leah step out onto the landing. He got out of the car, leaned against its side and called out, "When did you get married?"

She frowned, held up her left hand and told him, "You couldn't have seen this from all the way over there."

He shrugged. "Sorry."

"Bucky, you told him, didn't you?"

"Nope," he brother replied, and handed him a bag. "D'you wanna know who she married, Steve?"

"Who?"

"Josh Miller."

"Leah, _why_?"

Natalia shook her head. "Oh no, Steve, if you give me grief too –"

"When did I complain about Josh?" demanded Bucky.

"Oh, so we're calling him by his first name now?" Steve asked.

His best friend shrugged. "I don't even remember why we didn't get along."

"You didn't get along with a lot of people," Leah reminded him.

Bucky pointed at his best friend and said, "No, that was _him_. He just pulled me into it most of the time."

"Yeah, that is true," admitted Steve.

"Okay, but – be honest, you told him I was married, right?"

"Leah, _I can see the ring too_."

"You're shitting me!"

"Natalia Barnes Miller!" called Josef from inside.

His daughter turned and yelled back, "I'm twenty-seven years old, Pa, and they were in the military. They don't _care_."

"Yes, but I do!"

Bucky snickered and tossed Steve a bag with clothes in it. "Are you three staying the night, Leah?"

"No – why?"

"Tell mom she'll have SHIELD agents sleeping on her couch."

"All right. Hey, Ma! I know you like the furniture to stay clean but would you mind –"

"I heard!" she called. "I'll put down the couch cushions in the den."

"Great! Buck, she said –"

"I heard!"

"Yeah, you're shitting me _again_."

" _Leah_!"

"Yeah, I heard it too," Steve told her. "Couch cushions in the den."

Leah threw up her hands and walked inside. Bucky snickered, started walking across the yard – Steve followed – and called out, "Becca, can you tell Leah 'bout when you and Simon tried to eavesdrop on me and Carter having a conversation?" He reached the door and added, "Maybe she'll believe us about the eyesight then."

"I want to hear this too," said Steve.

"Well, good, 'cuz it was about you."

"Really?"

"Yeah, it was last... let's see, the boat stuff was Sunday before last so –"

"The 'boat stuff'? Don't you mean –"

"Name of the operation's still classified, Steve."

Becca appeared at the door. "How come he gets to know and we don't – _woah_."

Steve grinned at her expression and pointed to her brother. "I'm taller than him."

"By an inch, Steve! Do we have go through all this again?"

Becca snorted a laugh – her trademark – and said, "Of course you've had this argument before. C'mon inside."

Bucky pulled him forward, gesturing for him to enter first, and Steve quickly found himself surrounded by his best friend's family.

 

* * *

 

Steve woke up sometime during the middle of the night, and realized it was because he'd heard a noise – a door opening, footsteps going down the stairs. He pulled on an undershirt and went out into the hallway to confirm his guess: Bucky's door was ajar. He heard his best friend walk into the kitchen and take out – yeah, that was milk.

"You want some too?" Bucky asked when Steve was still on the stairs.

During the war he'd always forgotten about the extra-sensitive hearing Steve had, and yelled or shouted even when his best friend constantly told him he didn't have to; but this time he'd spoken normally despite the distance, like he knew that Steve could hear him.

Of course he knew – it was the same for him now.

"Sure," replied Steve quietly, and he walked down and into the kitchen.

Bucky handed him a steaming mug and they sat down across from each other in the dining room; neither spoke as they drank the hot milk.

"So, uh," said Bucky eventually, "Carter said I should probably tell you about the thing that's classified. Actually the – the freezing thing is classified too but I forgot it was. Anyways, she decided you'd figure it out eventually so there wasn't a point in not telling you."

Steve asked him, "And you didn't want to tell me?"

"Honestly I wish it never happened, but... I guess it's stupid to keep it from you."

He took a deep breath and continued: "Zola made this... machine. It used electricity and magnets and I'm not sure how it worked but it – it – it takes away your memories. Little stuff, but it gets worse every time. According to the assistant we caught on Stark's boat two weeks ago I was at a – a tipping point of sorts with it. If they'd put me through it any more times then I'd've started losing bigger memories. As it was it was messing up my thought process and my dreaming."

"Is that why you came down here?" Steve asked. "You couldn't sleep?"

"Yeah, kind of. I can't stay asleep for more than a few hours at a time – docs say that's why but they're probably guessing. It's gotten better – I mean, couple months ago I was stuck at an hour, max, and I only just started dreaming last week about anything other than... Zola's crap.

" 'Course that means I have an out whenever anyone asks for details or, y'know, who was where when – _sorry, don't remember that_ , even sometimes when I do."

"Why wouldn't you tell them?"

"Because most of it isn't important. I made the mistake of trying to ignore what I remembered, and Delgiacco almost killed me on that ship because of it. I've told them everything I can remember about the people ever since. But anything about the torture and such – I don't have to tell them about that. I've already talked about it enough."

A part of Steve – a large part – wanted to tell his best friend off for withholding information. He almost did it, too, but he caught the resigned expression on Bucky's face and realized maybe, just maybe, he should trust him on this one.

Time to change the subject.

"So what d'you –" Steve paused, then said, "Right, why would you know what you _don't_ remember –"

"Is your favorite color blue?"

"What? – no, that's yours."

"Oh." He frowned. "Then what's yours?"

"Yellow."

"Okay... isn't that someone else's favorite color, though?"

"Becca, I think. You and your dad are the same too."

" _Right_. That's why all the curtains are blue."

Steve laughed at Bucky's expression – he looked like he'd just found the answers to the universe – and his best friend quickly glared at him. "You don't get how weird it is," said Bucky. "There's all these facts and events that people keep _mentioning_ but I can't ask them to explain 'cuz then – 'what'd you mean, you don't remember that time you threw a book out the window on accident' – 'you don't remember your birthday, is there something we don't know about?' – so obviously I can't ask. Just pretend that I know what they're talking about."

"How sure are the doctors that you lost the memories to it, instead of some of the drugs or –"

"I know what happened to me, Steve, and that has to be good enough. The only way to confirm what any of the effects of the machine are would be to put other people through it but that's the definition of unethical and 'sides, I haven't told Stark that Zola kept the key for the damn thing on him at all times so it's probably somewhere in evidence storage."

"Why haven't you told him?"

" 'Cuz I don't trust Stark to not fire it up. This thing – I've seen it done to other people, that was another way they tried to get to me. The only reason I lived through it is 'cuz of the serum. One guy's head _exploded_."

"But you did tell him _that_ , right?"

"Yeah. But this is Stark – that wouldn't stop him, not if he really wanted to do it."

Steve nodded, and they fell back into silence.

"So, um... how did your dad die?"

He smiled, despite the question. "Are you gonna be quizzing me on everything now?"

" 'Quizzing' would assume I already know the answers. And I wouldn't ask you about your dad if I didn't have to. You were... a newborn?"

"Before I was born. Died in combat in the Great War."

"Right. And your mom died of consumption."

"Tuberculosis."

"Same thing."

"No one calls it consumption anymore, Buck."

"I know. I just like the word better."

Steve grinned, and he asked, "What else d'you think you're not remembering?"

His best friend returned the smile. "I _would_ like to know why we didn't like Josh."

"Oh, that's a long story."

"It's oh-two-thirty, Steve. We have time."

 

* * *

 

Becca appeared when the clock said 06:47, bleary-eyed and annoyed.

"How long have you been down here?" she asked, pulling out the coffee-maker and a box of grinds.

Her brother and his best friend looked at each other. "Three hours?" Steve guessed.

"Four and a half, I think."

"Why?"

"Because we can."

Becca stuck out her tongue and Bucky copied her, and Steve said, "Do I have to be the adult here?"

"Only if I don't eat some food soon," she replied. "You two can do all those superhuman things, you can make me breakfast too."

They exchanged glances again. "I'll get the oatmeal," said Steve.

"I got the fruit."

Becca raised her hands in a victory gesture and said, "Yes!"

Mrs. Barnes had set this kitchen up just the same as the last one, and Steve quickly found the oatmeal. He took out the cinnamon to pour into it while he was stirring the pot but Bucky stopped him and said, "Just put it on the table."

Right. He was still having stomach trouble.

"So when do you go back to school?" he asked Becca.

"End of the week. My roommates wanted me to come down earlier but I told them I was busy."

"Do they know about Buck and me?"

"My line was 'I lost my brother in the war' and that's all I would say about it. But they saw the papers at the beginning of the summer and connected the dots and I got a couple excited letters from them."

"You're putting off going back so you won't be interrogated about us."

"Oh, yeah."

That was the thing about Rebecca Barnes – for all that she was outgoing, pushy and at times immature, she was also very reluctant to gossip. That was one of the reasons Steve had always gotten along with her.

She launched into a description of her field of study, and of the college, and did most of the talking through breakfast. When Bucky got up and cleared the table, she leaned over the Steve and asked him, suddenly serious, "How much do you know about what Hydra did?"

"More than you."

"You _just_ found out yesterday –"

"And I spent half the day getting caught up. There's some things that're classified."

"But you can know them? You aren't even in SHIELD."

He shrugged. "Helps when you're, y'know, Captain America."

Normally Becca would've rolled her eyes – she and Simon both didn't think very highly of the moniker – but instead she pressed on: "Okay, fine. Then can you tell me what's going on with him?"

"What d'you mean?"

"Obviously the serum didn't do anything for your lying skills. Don't tell me you haven't noticed – he's scatterbrained, he can't focus on things for very long. Something happened that _we_ don't know about –"

"Yeah, it's called a head injury."

"But the serum –"

"It's not a miracle cure, Becca. It just speeds up healing."

Bucky cut in from the kitchen, "And sometimes that means it heals too fast to be set. If a bone doesn't heal right the first time around –"

"– you have to rebreak it," finished Steve.

Becca frowned. "You can't go hitting yourself in the head again," she told her brother.

" 'Xactly. It's not something fixable with a splint. I say give it time."

"Buck – we see cases like this in our classes. People get hit in the head and wake up with a whole different personality –"

"Steve, do I seem different to you?"

"Not that much. Fidgety, though," he said. "You were jiggling your leg all through dinner."

"You keep eating things when you read," supplied Becca. "It drives Ma crazy."

"Yesterday after lunch you went to the restroom and didn't come back for a while. Said you got distracted by the faucets and you didn't believe me when I told you it'd been fifteen minutes."

"His room is a _mess_. It never used to be."

"He was playing with one of Stark's microscopes and broke it on accident."

"He stares off into space when you're talking to him and when you get his attention he can't remember anything you just said."

"He taps his fingers on the table all the time – see, there, you're doing it again!"

"And if you give him a list of things to do you have to write it down, else he'll forget half of 'em in _seconds_."

Steve looked at his best friend, trying to keep his alarm hidden, and said in Irish, " _I thought you said there weren't any lasting effects._ "

" _There aren't,_ " replied Bucky. " _This is different. The machine only affected my older memories. And I've been dealing with this stuff fine so far._ "

" _Have you told the doctors? And – and the directors?_ "

" _Do you think I should?_ "

" _Yeah._ "

"Right, well, it's not very important in the grand scheme of things so you can stop worrying, sis. And stop pestering Steve about it."

"Don't worry about what you just had a conversation about in a language I don't understand? I'm in medical school, Buck. I know something's wrong, I know they did stuff you aren't talking about. If you keep ignoring it by saying that compared to everything else –"

Bucky set his mug down on the kitchen counter too hard and it cracked. " _I did it to myself._ "

Yiddish. In the Barnes family they usually had their serious conversations in a language visitors wouldn't understand; that had been one of the reasons Bucky's parents had been warry when Steve started to learn the language.

Becca looked over to Steve, and he nodded his head slowly. This was about the last time he'd tried to kill himself – head trauma.

His best friend had told them that his family knew about two of the attempts – the throat and the arm, the ones he couldn't hide the scars of. They didn't know that he'd goaded the guard to shoot him, and they especially didn't know that Hydra had chained his neck to the wall to keep him from damaging his head again.

" _Why?_ "

" _Why do you **think**?_ " He laughed, bitter. " _I ran headlong into a cement wall. I did it less than a day before SHIELD showed up, too. And I was **that close**. So don't tell me I shouldn't be ignoring it, because you have **no idea** how bad it –_ "

" _That's enough._ " Steve stood and walked to him. " _You want to take it out on someone, don't do it to your sister._ "

He took his best friend's hand and Bucky moved suddenly, twisting and crushing –

Steve grabbed his arm and told him, " _And if you want to break my hand you can wait until Stark runs his tests._ "

He could hear Becca in the other room hold her breath; he knew Bucky could as well.

They glared at each other for a long moment, and then his best friend relaxed and Steve let go.

"Sorry, sis."

"How many times did you really try to kill yourself?"

Bucky sat back down at the table and said, "Four times. Second was when I got a guard to shoot me."

 _They made me watch them execute him_ , he'd said earlier that morning. _They put me through the ringer for it but he was the one they killed_.

Steve scrubbed at the pot, trying to distract himself from the words but he couldn't get them out of his head.

"How much have you not told us?"

"You only know – maybe a quarter of it. And you can't tell our parents," Buck continued.

"How much does he" – she inclined her head at Steve – "know?"

"Everything."

_There were only two reasons Hydra would keep me alive – to use me as a guinea pig for Zola's experiments, or to use me to kill people. No one's asked me which one it was but I know it was the second. Zola talked about it a lot. Downside of being a sniper, you're useful to anyone and everyone._

"I'm still getting better, and I know I might not recover fully. I might also never sleep more'n three hours without waking up again, but _I don't care right now_ , Becca. I'll deal with it, and if I don't I know at least eight people who'll make me. Give me five minutes to enjoy this."

Steve finished the dishes and set them on the rack to dry. "Is there a plan for today?" he asked.

"We need to go through your things in the basement," replied Bucky.

"Right."

"I can help," Becca told them, "and don't bother saying no 'cuz I'm not letting you."

Her brother laughed – how he could do that moments after talking about Hydra's torture, Steve still didn't understand – and said, "Wouldn't dream of it. Ma probably wants her basement back."

" 'Back' – she never _had_ the basement. First thing we did when we moved in was put it all down there."

"Out of sight, out of mind."

"They bought the place with your death benefits, remember."

"Yeah. Forgot about that."

They fell into silence, until Steve brought up the missed presence of the old apple peeler and Becca began to tell the – admittedly funny – story of how Simon broke it.

 

* * *

 

They met Peggy – sorry, _Director Carter_ – at a diner that called itself an automat in Manhattan that afternoon.

Mrs. Barnes had insisted they stay on Long Island for longer but Bucky pointed out that Steve was still in SHIELD's custody – something about legal competency that hadn't been cleared up yet – and he had to go wherever either or both directors wanted him to go, and right then that meant having lunch in the city.

A waitress looked over when they entered, waved at Bucky and stared at Steve for a moment before turning back to the food she carried. They sat at a booth and she appeared in front of them soon after.

"English said two-thirty, right?" she asked, slapping a menu down in front of Steve.

Bucky nodded. "She said the lunch rush'd end by now."

"She comes here too often."

"Everyone in SHIELD comes here too often."

"Hey, they tip good and they don't loudmouth. I'm not complaining. But English needs to get out more. You know what you want?" she asked Steve.

"Uh... no, not yet. Ma'am."

The waitress chuckled. " 'Ma'am'," she repeated, and turned back to Bucky. "He's cute."

"She'll fight you for him," he warned her.

"I know. I want to see it."

Steve had a quick flashback to the time Peggy shot at him three times after catching him kissing a female Private – to his defense, Lorraine _had_ started it – and said, "Trust me, you don't."

Bucky snickered. " _Steve_. Order your food or she'll choose for you."

He picked the first three things that he saw, plus the Irish stew. The waitress scribbled it all down, raised an eyebrow at the stew and told him, "I'm judging you."

She walked off before he could reply.

"So, this is the place where Peggy beat up seven SSR guys trying to arrest her," Bucky told him, after they'd sat in silence for a minute or two. "One of 'em's her second-in-command now. And another one used to be her boss in the SSR before she took over."

"Why'd they want to arrest her?"

"Never got the whole story on that. Hey, Carter!" he called. Steve turned around and saw Peggy enter the diner. She gave the other man a sharp look and didn't speak until she reached their booth.

"Move over," she told Bucky, and sat down next to him. "What is it?"

"Buck says you took down seven agents in this place," Steve said. "Why?"

She rolled her eyes. "A Russian spy ring broke into Stark's invention storage and made off with most of it. The SSR believed Stark had created the theft out of wholecloth to cover his sale of the gadgets."

"One of your agents said your boss got blown up by some Russians – were those the same guys?"

"Yes. I agreed to help Stark clear his name and catch the real thieves and Chief Dooley took umbrage with that. He found out I'd constantly been two steps ahead of the SSR in my investigation and sent his men to arrest me."

Steve grinned; he could imagine the scene. "But your second has that limp – you fought him too?"

"No. I escaped out the alley and Sousa intercepted me there. I told him he could use that gun he was pointing at me or not but there was no other way he could stop me. He didn't use it, and I left."

"Why didn't he shoot you?"

"Oh, some people have qualms about shooting women."

"Okay, that was _one time_ when my shield was too far away and the gunner pinning me down was female and there _happened_ to be a handgun nearby," he told her.

She rolled her eyes. "I wasn't criticizing you, Steve. When we were creating SHIELD I made sure to include 'how to get over your reluctance about shooting women when they're about to kill you' in the training manual."

"He was also sweet on her," said the waitress, approaching with a large tray of food. "That was most of it. Okay, I'm just gonna – uh, let's see..."

The tray began to tilt and the dishes slid, and Steve quickly stood and leveled it out with his hand. "I'll hold it," he told her.

The waitress stared up at him for a moment and then said, "English, I am willing to fight you."

"Just give us the food, Angie."

She rolled her eyes and said, "Fine. There's your usual, and Barnes', and here is the _massive_ amount of food that _Captain America_ wanted. Including the Irish stew, which I can tell you now that you have it tastes _horrible_."

Angie left and returned a half-minute later, with a bowl of soup and without the tray. "Scoot over," she told Steve. "I'm on break. How do you _eat_ that?"

He'd finished most of the stew and moved onto the porkchop. Peggy and Bucky had likewise focused on their food – the latter's potato pancakes and applesauce. "It's good. Had it all the time as a kid."

"I don't get how people can eat that. It's water, hard potatoes, onions and overcooked meat."

"Yeah. That's what Irish stew is."

She stared at him with mock disgust. "You're Irish, aren't you?"

"Everything he ordered has potatoes in it," Bucky pointed out. " 'Course he's Irish."

"Was that on purpose?" asked Peggy.

"No, it... just happened. You got potatoes too, Buck."

"They're _latkes_ , Steve."

"Oh, there's a difference?"

"Yeah, it's called we don't live off the damn root."

Angie leaned over the table and asked Peggy, "Were they like this in Europe too?"

"Yes," the other woman replied. "We had to knock their heads together a few times to keep them focused."

"C'mon, it didn't happen that often," Steve said.

Bucky supplied, "Four or five times tops."

"In a year and a half. That's not that bad."

"In the army it could be," Angie pointed out.

"Phillips sometimes got annoyed," admitted Steve. "But ninety-nine percent of the time we were professional."

"Phillips was..."

"Colonel in charge of the SSR."

"Old guy? Really disappointing frown on his face? Looks like he's gonna fall asleep all the time?" She looked over at Peggy. "You brought him in here once, right?"

"He visited the office once, yes."

"How's he doing, by the way?" Steve asked.

"Retirement suits him. I'm going to the women's room," she added, and left.

Angie sighed. " _Finally_ ," she said, and quickly slid out of the booth and into the seat next to Bucky. She grinned at Steve's confusion and told him, "There's an elephant in this diner and if you two don't talk about it soon I am going to lock you in the storeroom."

"It's just like during the war," Bucky commented, and reached over to take the rest of Steve's mashed potatoes. "They couldn't stay away from each other, but neither of 'em would talk about it."

"Oh, god, that sounds horrible. How'd they handle it?"

A groan. "Stevie here has a hard time understanding female affection. I had to flirt with Peg for him once."

" _No_ , really?"

He grinned. "See, it was right after we got back from that camp and we're in this bar, and Peg walks in wearing this red number –"

Angie whistled. "I think I know what you're talking about, she only has one red dress."

"Then it's probably the one. Anyway, she comes right up to the both of us and she doesn't even look at me but Steve is kinda standing there stunned so she says something – I forget what but it was flirty – and is just standing there waiting for a reply but when I realize he's still as bad at this as he was before the serum I step in.

"So you have Peggy, talking to Steve, and me, pretending to be Steve and replying, 'cuz he's too busy staring at her. But she doesn't ever look my way 'cuz she's too busy staring back at him, which isn't helping things at all. And she walks away after dropping a _really suggestive_ one-liner and I tell him off for not getting his head together in time, and then he juggles some beer bottles and kisses the bartender and _Steve are you even listening_?"

Steve looked up from his fried potatoes. "Huh?"

"You've been staring at your plate for half the time we've been here. _Eye contact_ , Steve."

He scowled. "Y'know, I think we're a little old for you to lecture me on this kind of thing."

"Then ask her out already!"

"Buck –"

"I mean, it's kinda inevitable you'll end up with SHIELD anyway, no one's gonna cry foul if she gives you a job."

" _Buck_ –"

"Look, if you're _that_ worried you can go through Zhou, he has final say on hiring."

"That's not what I was –"

"And it'd be best if you had a different place to live," said Angie. "No offense to your parents, Buck, but I'm pretty sure they don't want _two_ thirty years olds wandering around –"

"Well then what, he gets an apartment –"

"– in the city, and y'know what, my landlord's been complaining that living with his co-director has put a strain on their relationship –"

"Will you just _stop_ , both of you?"

They paused and looked over at him.

"Is this – is this what Peg's had to put up with for two weeks?"

"Well, yeah," said Angie. "I mean, it's obviously gonna happen anyway, so –"

"That doesn't mean I'd want to hear about it from everyone!"

Angie looked over at the clock on the wall. "My break's up. Good luck."

Steve waited for her to disappear behind the door to the kitchen to ask his best friend – in Irish, he didn't want anyone eavesdropping – " _What the hell was that?_ "

" _As Angie said, that's what Peggy's been hearing from everyone for two weeks._ "

" _Then why did you –_ "

" _We figured no one would tell you, least of all Carter herself._ "

" _So this is what – a heads up?_ "

" _It's a starting point. There's a lot of things you two need to talk about and you have to know where she's coming from._ "

" _If she thinks that I'm gonna pressure her into –_ "

"Martinelli finished her break," said Bucky in English. Steve looked up and saw Peggy standing there, returned from the bathroom; he'd been so focused on talking about her that he hadn't noticed her approach.

His best friend slid out of the booth and said, "I'm gonna use the restroom too."

Peggy replaced him in the booth; Bucky put a hand on her shoulder and whispered loudly, " _Talk_."

They didn't talk, instead just sat in silence and ate their food.

Steve reclaimed and finished the mashed potatoes and decided to break the silence by asking, "So are you going to tell me why you're angry with me or do I have to guess?"

She looked over at him, brows raised and that cold expression on her face, and he winced. "Sorry. That came out wrong. Would you _please_ tell me why you're upset?"

Peggy sighed and then asked, "Why do you think Bucky joined the army?"

That was _not_ what he'd expected. "Well, uh – he hadn't wanted to, for a while, but then he changed his mind. I gave him crap for it, I thought that if he _could_ go then he should, 'cuz I couldn't."

Peggy nodded. "Except he never changed his mind." Before he could reply she continued, "He was conscripted. He never told anyone but the service numbers don't lie. He never wanted to go into the military, and he only stayed because of you. Don't tell me that's not true – we both know it is and besides I have him on tape saying as much.

"I know that he and Stark told you about the mission two weeks ago, and I also know that I interrupted with lunch before they could tell you how he got shot."

Steve had been meaning to ask him about that: Stark had accused Bucky of hypocrisy by omitting something from his recounting of the operation but they'd never gotten to that part of the story.

"What happened," she said, "was that your best friend got ahead of the rest of the teams, found you and a host of Hydra men and decided he couldn't wait for backup. They pinned him down immediately, obviously, and he stalled for time by trying to convince them to take him instead of you."

What – _what_?

And there he'd yelled at him for crashing the plane – and he'd have given himself for Hydra to –

Bucky had never even wanted to be in the army, or the SSR, and he'd finally gotten away from it only to throw himself back into combat and – and offer himself to trade for –

Steve didn't doubt for a second that he'd have done it. He knew that, clear as day. He wished he didn't.

He opened his mouth to speak – he didn't know what he'd say but it'd be _something_ –

"I'm upset with you because you inspire loyalty so effortlessly," Peggy continued before he could decide on his words, "yet you never seem to understand the sacrifices people make to follow you. Every one of the commandos joined the mission to get you – except for Dernier, because his wife was in labor, but if we'd told him I have no doubt he would have come as well.

"You have always pushed the people around you to do their best, Steve, and you're often right. But you don't notice how your requests affect them."

Steve could see where this was going: "This isn't about the war, is it?"

" _Yes_ , this is about the –"

"I'll get enough crap from Bucky about that. I already have. I get it, now, okay? But it isn't just about the war. They told me what everyone's been saying," he plowed on. "Buck and your friend Angie. They told me that everyone's been giving you grief about – _us_. Well, not grief but – acting like it's inevitable that we'd... get together."

Her frown relaxed but not into a calmer expression, rather an alarmed one. She didn't speak, though, so Steve said, "Peg, I don't –"

No, that wasn't right. He took a deep breath and started again: "It's been three years. It doesn't feel like that to me but it has been for everyone else, and I realize that. And if you don't – if you're not interested in... anymore then that's okay. I'm not gonna ask anything of you that you don't want."

"I'm going to have to talk to Angie about –"

"No, Peg, it was good that they did." He dipped his head. "I'm not gonna expect anything of you, all right? So you don't have to worry about me. At least about this."

Her posture and her expression softened, and she opened her mouth to reply but Bucky chose that moment to return. "So, uh, what're we doing now?" he asked.

"You're going to the office. I'm giving Steve a pre-tour of Stark's house."

" 'Pre-tour'?" repeated Steve.

"Did he not tell you? Stark's having you over for dinner tonight. Both of you, actually. You're welcome to bring a guest, Buck."

" _No_ , he didn't. What – this is _really_ short notice. Who would I even –?"

"Ask your sister. Give your parents a night alone."

Bucky looked at her, flabbergasted, and the asked Steve, "Why don't you look surprised by this?"

He raised his hands in mock surrender. "I've given up trying to predict what's going to happen next."

"All right, but I need to use one of your telephones, give Becca a heads up."

"Agent Ramirez can take you to the office."

"Thanks. Steve, you're coming back home before Stark's, right?"

"Um... I don't think I have clothes that would – but I _do_ have my dress uniform."

"I think I have mine, too. Did I tell you the folks got both boxes at the same time?"

Peggy gave Steve a sharp look. "You put them down as your next of kin?"

"Who else could I put?"

She sighed and didn't reply.

They conversed for another few minutes – random things, unimportant things – but Peggy kept her eyes mostly on Steve. Bucky noticed and kept nudging her foot from under the table so she sent him off; he grinned and shook Steve's shoulder as he left.

"So," she said when Buck had left, "are you ready for that tour?"

Steve smiled. "Let's go."

 

* * *

* * *

 

Peggy remembered very well the night she'd kissed Steve Rogers. The car, the fight and the determination in his eyes – but most of all the pain. It had stayed with her for a long time after the crash, and the war. She'd finally let it go a full year and a half later, and since then her life had been easier; she could focus more on work and less on the heartbreak.

It all came rushing back to her when she pulled him aside in the library in Stark's house that no one ever used. She tugged him down and her up and he hesitated.

He hadn't hesitated in the tunnel. Maybe she'd been wrong, maybe –

She looked up at him and found herself growing unsure as well, but before she could pull away he dipped down and kissed her.

Oh, but he was wonderful to kiss, even better than she'd imagined. She reached further up and he put his arm around to steady her, and his other on her waist – she ran one hand up his chest and one around his shoulder –

He broke off. "I thought you weren't interested," Steve said, his voice surprisingly light. He was teasing her, the bastard.

"I am a director," she told him. "I have to maintain my dignity. And yes, all the comments were annoying me."

"Reverse psychology?"

"Exactly. And... I did need to get used to your presence again."

"Are you trying to apologize for being stand-offish?"

His tone said he wouldn't hold it against her, which was honestly a better relief than she could've expected it to be. "Yes. I'm sorry for it. The same thing happened to Bucky, by the way, with him taking a job with SHIELD."

Steve pulled away. "Wait – what?"

"He's signing the forms this afternoon," she told him. "Stark has been on him for a month now about it. I believe several people have placed bets. You can understand why he was hesitant, with everyone pushing him into it."

"Oh. He mentioned you were after him –"

"Not me, Stark. I know better than to assume a veteran would want a field job with a federal agency."

"Right. Well, he needs to see a doctor."

"He's been seen by more doctors that probably any other person besides Andrew Carnegie or the King of Britain."

"No, Peg – there's something wrong with his head –"

"SHIELD has a psychiatrist. He's been talking to him for a while now. I wouldn't let him join if I thought it wasn't manageable."

"Not the shell shock – I figured you'd make him see someone, and if you didn't his parents would. But this is different. He's having problems focusing and he loses track of time. He never used to do that."

The image of Bucky chained to the wall of that cell, head covered in blood, rose in Peggy's mind. "You think he damaged his brain when he tried to kill himself."

"Yeah. He's been hiding it well – the memory loss, too, but that's different – but I noticed both before he told me. His sister has too."

Carter hadn't noticed, but then again she was also running a federal agency. "I'll have him schedule an appointment with a doctor at the Bronx hospital," she told Steve. "You'll have to ensure he keeps it, though."

"I will."

He ran his hand around her shoulder and around her neck, and she said, "Keep your hands away from the hair. It's always the first to be messed up."

"Don't you live upstairs? You can fix it."

"I have to go back to the office before dinner. I don't have time."

He leaned down and kissed her again, and Peggy lost track of that time she didn't have. She probably should have done this later, but honestly she hadn't wanted to wait at all.

She broke off, finally, and said, "You should get your own place. If we're doing this."

Steve laughed. "No job, no money – I thought I'd lounge around here for a while."

"Excuse you, the army will be sending you a large check soon with three years' worth of pay. You can split the rent with your best friend. And you have a job, just as Bucky does – you just haven't accepted it yet."

"It's really that simple?"

"Well, Zhou has final say but I really don't see him turning Captain America down."

"So – yes."

"Yes, darling," she sighed. "Sometimes it really is that simple."


End file.
